frontier, 2023 from the collection of South Arts

About the artist

Zipporah Camille Thompson

Zipporah Camille Thompson (she, her, hers) is a weaver and sculptor based in Atlanta, Georgia- indigenous land of the Muskogee. Thompson explores alchemical transformations through clay + woven textiles. Chaos, metamorphosis, and triumph are examined through ancestral narratives patchworked with black/brown liberatory and fantastical geographies/environments. Materialized into altars, sculpted shapeshifters, and hybrid landscapes, Thompson’s work investigates hope, myth, magic, and reconstructed power through limitless spirituality. She received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BFA from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and shown in spaces, nationally and internationally. Zipporah Camille Thompson is a 2023 recipient of the Margie E. West Prize, a 2021 MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellow, a 2020 Artadia Atlanta Awardee, a Watershed Zenobia Scholarship Award grantee, an NCECA Multicultural Fellow, and an Idea Capital Travel Grant recipient. Thompson is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA. She is a history addict, roller-skater, and lover of unicorns, zombies, the moon, tarot and all things fantasy.

Artist Statement
Approaching folk craft traditions with an improvisational, imaginative, wild and speculative futuristic approach, the work explores the body, otherness, and identity via hybrid landscapes. Composite landscapes combine highly tactile disparate materials such as wild woven textiles, hand knotted nets, fired clay, felted wool, paper pulp, handspun cord, and found objects. Tension and force unite discordant ephemera into handwoven cloth representing intimate processes of alchemy and metamorphosis.

Sculpted shapeshifters are prominent in the work, representing empowered bodies in crisis – namely Black, Brown, women, and queer bodies—united in communion with their elemental counterparts: water bodies, atmospheric cloud bodies, bodies of earth and fire. These shapeshifters fuse hard and soft, earth tones with otherworldly fluorescents, cotton and plastic, tension and laxity, further signifying the intersectionality of the bodies.

Drawing inspiration from mythology and infused with bold colors reminiscent of Hudson River School landscapes, including the haint blue of the Carolinas, the palette channels spiritual chakra energy and protective magic, adding layers of symbolism to the work.