“Mitchell’s performances, installations, and paper-based works use craft as tools of power, imbued with the essence of its maker’s memories and familial history, creating a searing reminder about known and unknown familial origins–a prevailing dilemma for many of the people represented in the African Diaspora.” – Juror Rehema C. Barber

Kelly Taylor Mitchell is an artist and educator based in Atlanta, GA where she is an Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Art Program Director at Spelman College. She has participated in residencies and fellowships nationally and internationally as an Affiliated Fellow at The American Academy in Rome, a SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellow and as an artist-in-residence at Women’s Studio Workshop, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and Atlanta Contemporary. Her work is exhibited nationally and can be found in collections nationwide like the Harvard Fine Arts Library, Walker Art Center Library, Bowdoin Special Collections, Smith College Special Collections, and more.

Kelly Taylor Mitchell is an interdisciplinary artist working across orality and ancestral memory, both real and imagined, woven into the fabric of the Africana Diaspora. Mitchell’s artistic process is ancestor worship, centering a reverence for spiritual technology and lineal craft — familial oral histories function as a medium in her work in tandem with printmaking, papermaking, book arts, performance and textiles. Her current work is linked to ancestral ties in the American South, referencing and constructing mythologies that find their roots in marronage, Sankofa, masquerade, and protective gestures of the Diaspora.