The use of art as an agent for social change— whether to subvert dominant ideologies or to simply critique mainstream culture—is not unique. Yet it can be a vehicle for effectively de-coding and reinterpreting modern culture, and Charles Huntley Nelson, a conceptual artist who employs video, digital media, photography, and appropriated images, is able to accomplish this, creating a new meta-narrative in his investigations of personal identity and technology.

Trained as a painter, Nelson uses the tenets of that classical medium as a guiding principle, applying them to new media. Influenced by the murals of John Biggers, the paintings of Marcel Duchamp, and 1960s film aesthetics, his use of layering—the translucent overlapping of images and concepts— allows him to re-contextualize these into a rich tapestry of cultural symbols.

Co-opting and conflating the present vernacular of reality television, infomercials, and the Internet, Nelson uses the resulting synthesis to make his artwork more accessible, while challenging viewers to look at modern culture in a unique way. To that end, his new media installations reference and use digital technologies “to create interactive installations that invite viewers to explore the shifting terrain of personal and collective identities”.

Born in 1970 in Houston, Texas, Charles Huntley Nelson received his BFA in 1992 from Washington University in St. Louis, and his MFA in Painting from Howard University in 1995. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows across the U.S. and in Europe. Nelson’s work was featured in the traveling show, HairStories, Afrofuturism, at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, and in Invisible Man, a solo show at the University of Miami. His film, Mutropolis, produced in collaboration with artist Kevin Sipp, will be included in the upcoming survey, Global Africa, at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Nelson’s work has been reviewed in ARTnews, Art Papers, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and on the website, Africana.com, and is represented in public, private, and corporate collections throughout the U.S.

A popular lecturer on new media and the visual arts, Nelson has served on the boards of Art Papers, the Atlanta Metropolitan Public Art Coalition, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. He was an artist-in-residence at the Hammonds House Galleries and Resource Center in Atlanta, and has taught at the Atlanta College of Art, Spelman College, and the University of Georgia. Nelson currently teaches painting at Georgia State University.