Join artist Jer'Lisa Devezin '19 and SMU Art History Faculty, Dr. Elyan Hill and Dr. Tashima Thomas, as they discuss Devezin's works in the current exhibition in Hamon Art Library's Hawn Gallery, Texturized.

The Panelists

Jer'Lisa Devezin '19 is an artist and educator born and raised in the Lower 9^th ward of New Orleans, LA. Heavily influenced by her upbringing, Jer’Lisa’s work engages research centering on identity, sexuality, New Orleans bounce culture and vernacular, and socioeconomics. Devezin’s practice integrates ceramic and sculptural processes such as welded steel, woven forms, cast slip, plaster, and metal. Her research on materials such as clay, metal, fibers, and the function of materiality are intentionally used to coexist and initiate conversations between the viewer and the work. She is currently the Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Sculpture, and Material Studies at Tulane University. She taught in SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, 2021-2024.

Dr. Elyan Hill is an assistant professor of African and African Diaspora art history. She received her Ph.D. in world arts and cultures/dance from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As an interdisciplinary scholar of African arts, her research interests include festival arts, religious materiality, Black feminisms, and embodied renderings of the domestic and transatlantic slave trades in Ghana, Togo, Benin, Liberia and their diasporas.

Dr. Tashima Thomas is an assistant professor in art history at SMU Meadows School of the Arts. She is an art historian, gastronome, curator and cultural critic specializing in the art of the African Diaspora in the Americas from the colonial period to the present.

For more information about the exhibition and the artist, see Jer'Lisa Devezin, Texturized. For questions about the exhibition and related programming, please reach out to the exhibition curator, Kate Alleman, kalleman@smu.edu.