‘Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open’: Diasporic Mapping in MFA Boston’s Exhibition

Nestled into the white-walled hallways of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston sits Kelly Taylor Mitchell’s exhibition “Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open.” The exhibition is slightly hidden, requiring its audience to weave between at least three hallowed hallways before finding it. But once found, “mouth wide open” presents Mitchell’s work in a minimalistic, quiet corner of MFA’s first floor.

While Mitchell is based in Atlanta and San Juan, her trip to Brazil’s Bahia state served as inspiration for “mouth wide open.” While in Bahia, Mitchell joined in lemanjá, the annual festival that celebrates the Candomblé orixá, goddess of the sea. Mitchell immersed herself in Bahia's spiritual traditions, which exhibit a fusion of European Catholicism and West African Yoruban rituals.

“mouth wide open” displays pieces that engage with the rite ceremonies and ocean-focused objects Mitchell encountered during her time in Bahia. The exhibit walls explained the works as an “ongoing project of diasporic mapping” throughout the Caribbean and American South. The artworks illustrate Mitchell’s own connection to her ancestry, community, and even larger spiritual forces.

The title of the exhibition, “mouth wide open,” seeks to capture the awe experienced by Mitchell. The vibrant color present in Mitchell’s work inspires a similar, “mouth wide open” awe in the exhibition’s audience.

“It’s very interesting how she plays with the different dimensions where she has the little rope things in front of it. And I do think it's a very joyful piece. It’s very colorful,” said museum visitor Laura Lievano in an interview with The Crimson.

Mitchell’s work exhibits a variety of rituals, including papermaking. As a water-intensive process, Mitchell’s papermaking gestures to the lemanjá festival. There, water symbolized nourishment, rebirth, and baptism. Mitchell’s water-intensive work calls back to this symbolism while also invoking the history of the African diaspora.

In addition to papermaking, Mitchell’s works include a variety of found objects, including bricks and beads. This technique calls back the traditions she learned while in Bahia — the creation of something new out of something ancient.

One of the displayed works “Come Bearing Gifts” uses handmade paper, tassel, raffia, netting, stickers, bricks, and beads. Presented in a fragmented, quilt-like fashion, the piece captures fragments from Mitchell’s family that have been passed down through generations of family memories.

“I think the contrast in this work specifically between the bricks which is, as the description says, a ‘ready made element’ and the papermaking is really interesting,” said Betty Song, a student from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, in an interview with The Crimson.

After observing the variety of shapes within “Come Bearing Gifts,” Song commented on the visual composition of the piece as a whole.

“I think it's just a big visual pleasure for me,” Song said.

Other attendees of the exhibition were pleased to see an exhibition like “mouth wide open” in the MFA that featured multilayered artworks such as “Come Bearing Gifts.”

“I love the fact that it's paper. I am very tactile. I prefer books to auditory. But the colors are brilliant and vibrant, and it just makes you feel cheerful or joy when you see this piece in particular,” said museum visitor Janet Goodman in an interview with The Crimson.

“Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open” is on view at the MFA through April 26.