“Meet the Artist” with Marcus Morris

Thursday, July 23, 2026
Doors at 5:30pm. Artist talk at 6pm.
25 Dederick Street, Kingston, NY

On Thursday, July 23, we welcome Marcus Morris to “Meet the Artist” night at CPW. Morris will present his ongoing project, Elegance Is Refusal, which reimagines Beloved by Toni Morrison as a queer narrative set in Appalachian Ohio. Elegance, to Morris, a feminine of ‘cool,’ long associated with Black culture, considers Black queer and femme identity as a source of power and refusal in a White supremacist patriarchal capitalist system. Elegance Is Refusal comes from the editor Diana Vreeland, who says, “Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.”

The project employs theatrical costuming to set the stage of a Reconstruction-era landscape. Working with Xavier Cruz, cast to play Morris’s younger self, he engages race, gender, sexuality, history, class, and the promise of liberty via queer mothering and the journey to “The Clearing” in Beloved. This series of images and video is made near land his family has occupied in Ohio since being emancipated in the early 19th century. Utilizing medium and large format analog captures as well as digital photography and video, Morris pursues an expansive vision for the project. It is an offering to the invisible Black, queer and Appalachian people who are his ancestors and ghosts.

This event will be live-streamed on CPW’s YouTube page at 6pm.

Join us on select Thursday evenings at CPW for illuminating talks with local and visiting artists. “Meet the Artist” allows the public to get to know new work, to hear about artistic processes, and to meet friends and other local artists. The evening takes place at CPW’s gallery at 25 Dederick Street in Kingston, NY. It is free and open to the public. Coffee, tea, and snacks are served.

“Meet the Artist” is made possible by generous grants from the Arnold & Augusta Newman Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Marcus Morris is an interdisciplinary artist and imagemaker whose work centers Blackness, queerness and performance. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Visual Arts and Queer Studies at Denison University.

Marcus was an MFA Fellow in Photography from The Ohio State University and studied at the Columbus College of Art & Design and The Michaelis School of Fine Art at The University of Cape Town in South Africa. Marcus is a founder of Cinéseries, an experimental film series at The Wexner Center for the Arts, and was co-curator of the 2024 Fotofocus Biennale at Beeler Gallery. He was the Fall 2024 Artist Fellow at the Annex at The Gund at Kenyon College and winner of Best Series in the 2025 Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition. He has been featured in The Appalachian Journal, Gayletter and Callaloo Journal for African Diasporic Culture, Literature and Arts.

Images © Marcus Morris