Jodie Mim Goodnough: Paper Trail

February 27 – March 26, 2025

Public Reception: Thursday, February 27 from 5:00 – 7:00 PM                                       

The Department of Art and Art History is pleased to announce the opening of Jodie Mim Goodnough: Paper Trail, an exhibition of photographs in Salve Regina University’s Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery.

“Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of introspective significance (the making of history in the final instance).”

–Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and Production of History, 1995

In this one-person interactive exhibition, the artist explores Trouillot’s idea of historical production through the lens of her personal photographic archive, compiled during her sabbatical in the fall of 2024.  During this period, she scanned over thirty years of negatives (the sources) and assembled these and her digital images into a complete archive of her photographic work thus far.  Visitors to the exhibition will be asked to take part in moment #3, the process of making of narratives, by creating their own collections from the hundreds of physical prints present in the gallery.

Goodnough’s interest in the subjectivity of archives, both personal and institutional, has evolved through her years teaching documentary photography and image literacy to Salve Regina University students.  Often, to emphasize the medium’s troubled relationship to the truth, she has asked her students to perform the same task requested of visitors here – to select images from a larger set that illustrate their point of view, regardless of the original intent of the photographer.  After the exhibition will come moment #4, that of introspective significance, as these viewer-created collections inform the artist’s future projects.

Jodie Mim Goodnough is a multidisciplinary artist based in Pawtucket, RI.  She attended the photography program at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine in 2007 and received her MFA from Tufts University in 2013.  Goodnough is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artist Grant, a RISCA Grant in Photography, and a Tufts University Alumni Travel Grant, and has attended residencies at UCross Foundation, Wassaic Project, and ChaNorth, among others.  Her work has been shown nationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including at Spring/Break Art Show in New York, ArtPort Kingston, and in the solo exhibition Biophilia at the Newport Art Museum in Newport, RI.  Goodnough is currently an Associate Professor of Art in at Salve Regina University.

The exhibition Jodie Mim Goodnough: Paper Trail runs from February 27 through March 26, 2025.   On Thursday, February 27 the campus community and the general public are invited to attend a reception for the artist.  This reception will run from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in the Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery.

The Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery is located in the Antone Academic Center on the campus of Salve Regina University.  It is handicap accessible with parking along Lawrence and Leroy Avenues.  Its exhibits are open Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00 to 6:00 p.m., Wednesdays and Fridays 11:00 to 5:00 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays noon to 4:00 p.m.  The gallery is closed on Mondays.  We invite you to visit us.