Bio/Statement — Willoughby Lucas Hastings

Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, and currently based in Rockland, Maine, Willoughby Lucas Hastings is an interdisciplinary research-based artist working primarily in textiles, photography, video, and sculpture. Her work examines the aesthetics, traditions, and systems of whiteness, especially within the American South. She thinks critically about the environments we inhabit and how they can maintain or confront our personal biases. She produces works of self and societal critique that often incorporate textiles and photography to document and subvert the material culture of whiteness. As well as, producing protest banners and protest garments which are made in solidarity with queer, feminist, and antiracist activism and are constructed with donated materials.

Hastings has most notably exhibited work at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Huntsville Museum of Art, and the Wiregrass Museum of Art. She has had solo exhibitions at the University of Alabama in 2022, and the Lowe Mill Arts Center in 2023. Hastings and Jahni Moore are recipients of the 2022-2023 Verdant Fund Project Grant and the Alabama Council on the Arts Grant to produce their public artwork, Southern Galactic which culminated in a weekend-long multidisciplinary event honoring the work of Sun Ra and his connection to Huntsville, AL. Hastings was also a 2022 Artist-in-Residence at MassMoca’s Assets for Artists Program and a 2023 resident at JX Farms in Cleveland, Mississippi. During the 2019-2020 academic year Hastings was a Research Fellow at the Tufts Institute of the Environment. Hastings has received additional grant funding from the SMFA at Tufts, Mass Cultural Council, City of Boston, and CERFT+. Lastly, Hastings has taught various studio and seminar courses including Time: Intro to Time-based Methods as a Visiting Lecturer at MassArt, Women, Gender, and Race in Animation & History of Animation as Part-time Faculty at Lesley University, Drawing 1, Drawing 2, & 3D Foundations as Part-time Faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Senior Thesis as a Post Graduate Teaching Fellow at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

Links :

https://verdantfund.org/awardees22

https://www.alabamacontemporary.org/opportunities/the-verdant-fund/

https://events.hmcpl.org/event/2023-05-13/southern-galactic-textile-art-workshop-presented-artist-willoughby-hastings

https://www.uah.edu/events/icalrepeat.detail/2023/05/19/27922/639%7C640%7C642/celebrating-afrofuturism-sun-ra

https://www.reckon.news/black-joy/2023/05/space-is-our-place-how-an-alabama-city-became-a-launch-pad-for-afrofuturism.html

https://www.assetsforartists.org/blog/2022/welcome-august-2022-artists

https://artscopemagazine.com/issues/march-april-2022/

https://www.fsfaboston.com/beyond-words

https://www.wiregrassmuseum.org/exhibitions/b22-wiregrass-biennial/

https://www.uah.edu/ahs/departments/art/news/17006-huntsville-native-wiloughby-lucas-hastings-exhibits-at-salmon-library-gallery

https://www.wiregrassmuseum.org/beyond-the-box-artbox-2021/