A LAYIN' ON OF HANDS...

In conjunction with the 2025 Filter Photo Festival, Filter Photo is pleased to presnt A layin’ on of hands..., a solo exhibition of work by Alayna N. Pernell.

In A layin’ on of hands…, Alayna N. Pernell explores the cultural and emotional significance of care in the lives of Black women, drawing inspiration from a phrase she often heard growing up in Alabama. In her community, "a laying on of hands" symbolized the transmission of power, healing, and blessing through touch—a love language Pernell has carefully incorporated into her visual practice. Through photography and archival exploration, this exhibition reflects on how the act of care shapes the lives and experiences of Black women.

Our Mothers’ Gardens delves into historical photographic research, offering a broader societal perspective, while for the record intimately explores personal narrative through the act of mending photographs. Together, these works form a nuanced portrayal of the interconnectedness between the historical and personal facets of care—revealing how care transcends individual experience to become a deeply rooted cultural and historical force.

Pernell envisions this exhibition as both a memorial and an honorary space— one that remembers and honors the lives of Black women. These works collectively reveal that care is not just a personal practice, but a force that continues to shape the lives of Black women and the communities they sustain.

Our Mothers’ Gardens Artist Statement

In my body of work entitled Our Mothers’ Gardens (2020-2022), I researched and uncovered repressed images of Black women held in photographic collections at the Art Institute of Chicago. The images I found and researched depict the exploitation of and violence towards Black women, whether overt or obscured. With these images, I excavated, re-photographed, re-captioned, and re-contextualized the original works to show them in a different light with new meaning. By engaging with these images with the intervention of my hands and my body, I rescued and protected the Black women and children’s bodies and their humanity. I also unearthed their stories individually and collectively so that they could be seen and heard. I beg for more than the visibility of Black women in institutional collections and hopeful restitution. I also desire for the issue around institutions holding and silencing collections of visible and (in)visible violent visual depictions of Black women to be further highlighted and corrected.

for the record Artist Statement

In this explorative body of work, for the record, I mend past photographs of myself in preparation for my past selves' memorialization and final rest. With the laying of my own hands, I tenderly put back together moments in my life from childhood to early adulthood. This work is directly inspired by 15 years' worth of private diary entries I penned from 2006 to 2021.

Throughout my entries, there are echoes in things I spoke of as a child that cyclically drifted into my adulthood, such as issues with suicidal ideations, relational complications, and health battles cementing the relatable notion that while many things change, many things remain the same and take on a new form.

About the Artist 

Alayna N. Pernell is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator from Heflin, Alabama. She is currently the Associate Lecturer of Photography and Imaging at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is also a Content Editor for Lenscratch, an online photographic arts publication, and founder of Surely You Know, an archival photographic initiative dedicated to returning displaced photographs to black families. In May 2019, she graduated from The University of Alabama where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography and a minor in African American Studies. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2021. Pernell’s artistic practice considers the gravity of the mental well-being of Black women concerning the physical and metaphorical spaces they inhabit.   

She has provided lectures about her work at various spaces including Texas Tech University, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, The Sheldon, and Syracuse University, among others. Her work has been exhibited in various cities across the United States, including FLXST Contemporary (Chicago, IL), Refraction Gallery (Milwaukee, WI), JKC Gallery (Trenton, NJ), RUSCHWOMAN Gallery (Chicago, IL), Colorado Photographic Arts Center (Denver, CO), Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA), among several others. Her work is currently held in private collections at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Illinois State Museum.   

Pernell was named the 2020-2021 recipient of the James Weinstein Memorial Award by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Department of Photography, the 2021 Snider Prize award recipient by the Museum of Contemporary Photography, a 2023 Mary L. Nohl Fellowship Emerging Artist recipient, and a 2024 gener8tor Art x Sherman Phoenix Artist. She was also recognized on the Silver Eye Center of Photography 2022 Silver List, Photolucida’s 2021 Critical Mass Top 50, and a 2021 Lenscratch Student Prize Honorable Mention, among others.