A photograph of Nora Howell in a Marie Antoinette inspired headpiece is placed at the entrance of the artist’s exhibit at Gallery CA. In the portrait, taken by Nate Larson, the ostentatious piece falls somewhere between mask, fascinator, and cancerous growth. We are introduced (at least in photographic form) to the material palette that will run throughout the exhibition: ceramic, felt, beads, netting, and rope.
It is notable, Howell’s solo exhibition, Now You See It, Now You… opened just two weeks after the current administration’s faux pas of a Great Gatsby themed party on Halloween. Yet the artist is also interrogating her personal experience of identity, power, and privilege as a creative, arts administrator, and white woman working within the nonprofit industrial complex.
The extensive text included throughout the exhibition, co-written by the artist’s sister Dr. Junia Howell, is as integral a part of the experience as each of the objects and videos of Howell’s performances. From the statement, the exhibition “seeks to make the invisible impacts of privilege visible through fantastical, metaphorical sculptures, installations, and performance art. The exhibition’s primary metaphor alludes to another historical moment where inequities between the ruling classes threatened to upend the social order…”
The metaphorical reference deepens as one continues the journey through the exhibition to find more photographs, again taken by Nate Larson, of Howell’s performance piece, “Let Them Eat Cake.” The performance juxtaposes the work of Howell as a white nonprofit administrator working in a Black community with those notoriously oblivious words Marie Antoinette was rumored to say in response to the suffering of the poor—who had no bread.
The headpiece obscures Howell’s vision, preventing her from seeing the true impact of her actions. It illustrates her role as a white woman attempting a life that addresses the inequity of wealth and power she was born into and the challenge, even failure, of actually being able to release privilege while the systems and structures that embed them remain intact.
A huge light box wrapped with an image of a decaying interior wall and door of a West Baltimore row house sits opposite these photographs with a chandelier made from the same materials as the headpiece. The play of opulent form with such tactile materials sets up a dissonance illustrating the discord between violence and fragility in feminine whiteness. The beautiful nature and exacting effort taken to ensure each piece is perfect leaves room for the very human hand of Howell—a reminder that the dismantling of white supremacy is a human endeavor and requires acknowledgement, attention, care, and action. The decaying white door on the image behind the chandelier reads as a warning of what happens if we do nothing and/or forget this.
The physicality and materiality of Howell’s work is a deep part of the success of this exhibition. At the turning point from one side of the gallery to the other a decorated broom sits. This piece, “Good Intentions” feels both like an art object and a discarded cleaning tool. It is a prop from a video that is the next artwork one encounters titled, “The Sweep”, but also stands alone as a sculptural form.
In “The Sweep” we see Howell’s full character Oblivia wearing the headpiece from the photograph at the entrance. Also wearing a white suit and pumps, she pushes the broom. As she sweeps, its decorations fall off and litter the sidewalk replacing the detritus that had just been swept away.
According to the wall text, this piece was initially inspired by the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s tragic death at the hands of police in 2015. Howell worked at a nonprofit nearby at the time and saw the influx of white volunteers and the philanthropic community to the neighborhood. Now, ten years later this video questions whether that “drop-in” charity did anything more than leave a trail of whiteness that now needs to be swept up.
I am familiar with much of Howell’s past work, which also investigates white supremacy, womanhood, becoming a mother, and how we proceed through life, work, and the world. Three ceramic vessels included in this exhibition seem to tie all these themes together, taking the work beyond a social space into the depths of how power and privilege are held within and impact our bodies and souls.
The three vessels titled, “Decadent Collectibles,” are created from bisque fired porcelain. Porcelain is a difficult and fragile clay to work with because it remembers. It has a history. And with its high price, was often only enjoyed by the wealthy—a physical manifestation of desire, objectification, and fragility.
The forms Howell creates add to this embodiment. They are luscious in shape, feel deeply feminine, voluptuous, and shapely. They are sanded bisque, which means they have not been vitrified. Vitrification is the process that firing a clay to its highest temperature creates. This process transforms it, fusing the matter into a hard glass-like structure. It is what gives clay objects their strength and longevity.
The fact that Howell’s work is left fragile and porous adds to the metaphor. These vessels, although powerful aesthetically, are weak structurally. Each vessel is also spilling out cotton rope braided and knotted. The rope falling from the ceramic is organic in a way that fully reinforces them as symbolic of female bodies. The surface and shape make them desirable, much like the female form. That desire can often turn to objectification. I read the rope as what spills out when one opens to vulnerability and also as the bleeding of a body injured through attack.
The dual experience of power and oppression represented by these vessels gets more to the complexity of white women’s identities. They are, like Marie Antoinette, representative of a type of beauty that has been given power and status. They are, when as naive as Antoinette, sharp, dangerous objects that can be wielded with disastrous and violent results. They are also not at the top of the power hierarchy and this can leave them in a precarious place, especially when patriarchy joins forces with other identity-based oppression to attempt to silence their truths.
The final work in the exhibition, “In Process…” has been in process from 2020 to 2025. It is a knot of ribbon with Howell’s thoughts documented as she read Shannon Sillvan’s book, Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. A beautiful object in the way it is installed, it would also make for a powerful performance if Howell ever decided to try to untangle the thoughts by untangling the ribbon. The viewer is invited into this piece by contributing their own thoughts after experiencing the exhibition.
Although definitely a show about whiteness and all the ways it is used in support of supremacy, Howell’s process moves to another plane. Throughout the exhibition she discards some of the elements of white supremacy for a more community focused process and co-creation. I have mentioned some collaborators already– including her sister, Nate Larson, those who attended the performances (the opening even had a performance with an actress wearing the headpiece and distributing “transformative cupcakes”). Howell’s husband films her performance pieces, and her son gave tours at the opening, telling people, “that’s my mom.”
The value of community is inherent in the exhibition even as it deals with Howell’s own identity and privilege. This is important. It takes the work beyond static commentary to an example of how we might build community, collectively dismantling systems of oppression, toward a future where we are all free.
Now You See It, Now You… is on view at Gallery CA until December 12, 2025 with open hours: Friday 12/5, 12–6pm; closing event Friday 12/12, 5-7pm and by appointment. For appointments email: [email protected].
