In An Opus of Love, a new exhibition at the TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image by Tyler Assistant Professor of Art Education David Herman Jr., collage plays a central role as an artistic technique and a tool for introspection and narrative construction. Through such creative practice, they capture the subtle ways in which the past is always present and creates non-linear, seemingly fragmented narratives in which past and future coexist in meaningful dialogue.

In this Q&A, Herman, a lens-based artist and distinguished visual art education scholar, reflects on the exhibition as it opens and the ways in which An Opus of Love (January 9-February 22) uses his personal archival material to explore themes like fatherhood, Black visualities, Gullah Geechee culture, and perception.

Can you tell us about the central theme of An Opus of Love and what inspired this body of work?

The exhibition explores how the past lives within us, shaping our perspectives and forming the ideologies that guide our lives. A central theme of the exhibition is memory, a subject that has always intrigued me. For this work, I was inspired to use my personal collection of archival photographs as a means of reflecting and thinking through ideas of creative praxis. This body of work aligns with the idea that our perception is about the visible as well as how we interpret and make sense of the invisible. Through collage as both an artistic and conceptual framework, I investigated memory’s non-linear and fragmented nature, creating narratives where the past, present, and future coexist dynamically.

How does this exhibition fit into your overall artistic journey? Is it a departure or a continuation of previous themes?

Opus builds on my longstanding curiosity about the communal aspects of existence. There’s a consistent throughline in my work—across past exhibitions, poetry, and photography—that examines how culture persists, how identities are formed, and how historically marginalized identities, specifically racial identities are perpetuated. This exhibition is a continuation of those explorations, with a heightened focus on Black life and the pedagogical aspects of relationality. It is deeply tied to questions of existence, memories, and how sociality itself is pedagogical, which echoes the questions posed in the exhibition of:  What is it like to exist and how does the pedagogical survive?

What message or emotions do you hope viewers will take away from this exhibition?

The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how memories operate in their lives—not just as a factual record but as a perceptive and imaginative act that is spatiotemporal. I hope to inspire an attunement to the interstitial moments of being, those fleeting and often unnoticed connections that shape us. Our memories and imaginations weave together a dynamic and often chaotic sense of time and existence. I am thinking through some of this in the work.

The title, An Opus of Love, suggests a deeply personal or profound exploration. Can you elaborate on the significance of "love" in this context?

Yes, the exhibition is personal, but it also reaches toward something universal. Love, for me, is an act of preservation that’s tethered to an understanding of time and place as convergent rather than separate. This convergence, as the exhibition suggests, transforms our understanding of agency, allowing us to imagine what has been lost, forgotten, or misrepresented. Love in this context is about honoring the traces of what was, embracing the indeterminate, and making visible the absences and silences that carry profound weight. And the weight is in the gestural.

What mediums and techniques did you use in creating the pieces for this exhibition?

I am primarily a lens-based artist with photography as my central medium. In this exhibition, I incorporated cultural artifacts, such as seashells and cotton, to create sculptural pieces that transcend the photographic. Collage serves as a central theme throughout the show, highlighting its ontological features—discontinuity, proximity, and imagination. Recognizing that our looking practices are inherently collage-like, I included single photographs to further explore and address these ideas within the exhibition.

As a professor, how do your academic experiences and interactions with students influence your artistic practice?

My approach to art, both as a scholar and an artist, emphasizes process over product. While the finished product has its own stories to convey, the process of creation is a journey that deserves focused attention. In art education, particularly in urban contexts, it’s crucial to help pre-service visual art education students reflect on their positionality as social beings and educators. This reflective work is embedded in the creative process itself. As an artist, I continuously revisit concepts of the self and others, which informs how I think through and engage with students academically and creatively. My creative-research praxis speaks to how art can function as active and reflective expressions. It becomes imperative to encourage students to critically examine how their experiences and ideologies shape both their art and their pedagogy.

Were there any particular challenges or breakthroughs while working on this series?

The biggest challenge was balancing conceptual thinking with the physical act of making. As a scholar, it can be challenging to transition into the material construction of ideas. However, this challenge also became a breakthrough, reinforcing my interest in the pedagogical nature of creation. Working through both the theoretical and practical aspects of making aligns with my scholarly inquiries into how ideologies are formed and perpetuated. This process mirrors the exhibition’s exploration of memory as an imaginative practice, where the experiences of making emerged as gestural and dialogical. 

How do you approach the process of storytelling in your artwork, particularly for this exhibition?

I see storytelling as a practice that begins and ends somewhere in the middle. Life itself is a collection of fragments—experiences, emotions, and perceptions without a fixed home. For this exhibition, I used collage as a medium to explore the meanings of memory and contextualize ideas of Blackness, refusal, agency, and fatherhood. These stories are less about resolution and more about engaging with the dynamic and fragmented nature of perception as a rite of passage; as points of reconciliation.

How does this exhibition contribute to or reflect on contemporary conversations in art and culture?

An Opus of Love speaks to contemporary conversations about memory, time, and relationality. It reflects on how histories are formed, forgotten, and misrepresented. The work also engages with questions of existence and communal being, emphasizing the importance of attunement to the traces and absences that define our shared lives. This aligns with current discussions about the enduring power of the imaginary in shaping cultural and social narratives. The work is interested in thinking about what’s pedagogical and how the pedagogical survives.

Herman was named the 2022 Outstanding Higher Education Art Educator by the Pennsylvania Art Education Association.

An Opus of Love is on exhibit at the TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image
1400 N. American Street
Suite #103
Philadelphia, PA 19122

Gallery Open Wed. - Sat. 12 to 6pm