Munson will host an exhibition by Nigerian Sri Lankan artist Samantha Modder titled “Source of All Hair, Wearer of All Socks,” on view Nov. 15 through Dec. 15 in the Pratt Munson Gallery in Fountain Elms. This exhibition is free and open to the public, with an opening reception from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15.

 

Modder works figuratively in pen, collage, and digital media to portray larger-than-life Black, female characters taking up space in real and imagined worlds. In this exhibition, she presents a subjective Black woman’s fairytale to process interlocking structures of oppression. Like a storybook turned mural, the installations are digitally manipulated ballpoint pen drawings that follow a Black woman in her nightdress and striped socks in a world made up of only her and her duplicates. The work is an allegory for our contemporary condition, confronting questions of power, exploitation, and resistance.

 

“I position this work within the speculative practice of the Black imaginary—a centering of Black dreams and fantasies to create alternate spaces of both comfort and confrontation,” Modder says. “The spaces I create are less utopia and more speculative test lab, a way to decenter broken realities and focus instead on the imaginary to help understand and rethink oppressive structures. Black hair in particular serves as a powerful protagonist in my work pushing the narrative forward in soft curls and defiant shapes.”

Born in Lagos and raised in Sri Lanka, Modder lives in Tampa where she is an assistant professor of art and design at the University of Tampa. Her work has been widely exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces, including at the Sarasota Art Museum (2024), African American Museum of Dallas, Texas (2023), Catskills Art Space (2024), Morris Museum in Morristown, N.J. (2024), and as part of Miami Beach’s No Vacancy 2023, where she installed seven murals at the Catalina Hotel during Miami Beach Art Week.

 

Modder graduated from Dartmouth College in 2017, earning a bachelor’s degree in studio art and engineering, and earned her master’s degree of fine arts from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo, in 2022.

 

For more information, visit munson.art/prattmunson-exhibit/samantha-modder.

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