Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows

FRONT International 2022

Akron Art Museum

Launched in 2018, FRONT International is a contemporary art exhibition that presents artist commissions, performances, films, and public programs across Northeast Ohio every three years.

The 2022 edition, Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, embraced art as an agent of transformation, a mode of healing, and a therapeutic process. The title is an homage to ​“Two Somewhat Different Epigrams,” a 1957 poem by Langston Hughes, who moved to Cleveland in his childhood and maintained an artistic connection to the region.

FRONT 2022 was conceived through a collaborative methodology that reflected a curatorial interest in group dynamics and therapeutic processes. Beginning early in 2019, the exhibition’s Artistic Director, Prem Krishnamurthy, convened local cultural partners and stakeholders to consider the goals, methods, and outputs of the exhibition, resulting in the assembly of an expanded Artistic Team that played a key role throughout the exhibition’s development. 

The Artistic Team is a multidisciplinary group who guided and advised on the exhibition’s process and worked to amplify its public impact. FRONT 2022’s artistic team was comprised of Evelyn Burnett, Courtenay Finn, Tina Kukielski, Emily Liebert, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Tereza Ruller, and Murtaza Vali.