Embodied: The Power of Presence on View at the Greenville Museum of Art June 5-September 19, 2026

Opening Reception:  June 5, 6-8 p.m.                                

Embodied: The Power of Presence, a collaborative exhibition of new mixed-media and photo-based work by Outer Banks artists Suzanne Scott Constantine and Lynne Scott Constantine, will be on view in GMOA’s West Wing Gallery this summer. The exhibition opens with a reception at GMOA on June 5 from 6-8 p.m.  The reception is free and open to the public. At 6:30 p.m., Suzanne and Lynne will take questions and will perform their new spoken-word poem, “Entanglements,” written especially to accompany the exhibition.

The 29 artworks in the exhibition ask us all to consider what it feels like and means to be  “embodied,” particularly during a moment when so much of our lives are lived virtually.

The body is much more than the meat on our bones: it’s a vessel, a symbol, a question, the site of our encounter with every other being and with the planet.  The body is the baseline for defining “human” and is the center from which connection and emotional bonds emanate. The basic human bodily form creates a sense of recognition that is the grounding for our interdependency. Yet the differences among bodies, particularly around gender, skin color, and perceived ableness, have historically led to disconnection, exclusion, and hierarchies of power. 

The bodies we offer in this exhibition are stories, metaphors, evocations of an interconnected space of creative thought. The way we, as women artists, present these stories connects us to a tradition of women artists who step outside of classic figuration: surrealists, icon makers, craftswomen, visionaries.

The people who inspired this work are an assortment of older women with extraordinary stories to tell through the language of movement and their command of space. What we see in their embodied language does not merely concern women. All of us have the same question: What does it look like to have personal autonomy, a sense of one’s place in the world, and a presence that challenges preconceived ideas of what can and should be?  As the writer Ocean Vuong has said, “You have to articulate the world you want to live in, first.”

We offer our work as “open questions,” inviting you to think more deeply about what living in your particular body at this particular moment feels like to you, and what it might portend for tomorrow. The exhibition includes an interactive work that invites people who visit the gallery to share their experience of embodiment and their responses to the questions we pose.

We hope you’ll visit the exhibition this summer.

Greenville Museum Of Art, 802 South Evans St., Greenville, NC, (252) 758-1946

Museum Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.