You're reading now beyond the words, seeing through the images
2022
Christopher Givens
New Orleans, Louisiana
Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.
About Christopher Givens
Born in Northeast Louisiana, Christopher Givens is a New Orleans-based interdisciplinary artist who studied Film Arts at the University of New Orleans (2009) and later earned an MFA in Theatre Design from Tulane University (2020), where he was a fellow of the Mellon Program for Community Engagement. He has co-founded and initiated multiple community arts projects, including the experimental exhibition space St. Mary Majaks (2014), the educational platform Beaubourg School (2019), and screening series Cinema Sanctuary (2022).
Givens’ personal work draws from basic questions of philosophy and how to live in right relation to given circumstances. He has a passion for reading, music, and meetings. Prompted by lockdown, he began a film writing process bringing together a decade of notes and ideas. This multi-faceted project investigates interconnective systems, synchronicity, varieties of spiritual orientation and fulfillment, the functions of dreaming, the wisdom of nature, and the relationships between psychic landscapes and immanence.
Program Participation
Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2025
Website / Social Links
My work aims to animate utopian ideas and put them to the test to see where they fail or succeed, and see if they resonate with others. If an encounter with my work can cause the needle to shift by a fraction of a degree towards a world that is more loving, passionate, imaginative, or harmonious, then perhaps it will have succeeded.”