by Magdalena Sisto '29 on September 24, 2026
A&E - Art
Felicia Megginson’s art exhibit, “Re-Framing Nature,” focuses on the ways the human form can inhabit and coexist with nature. The most powerful aspect of this exhibit is its existence on Providence College’s campus. It’s located within a small corner of campus that is seldom visited by the larger PC student body, the Reilly Gallery, but its presence is an act of resistance in and of itself. Last year, several emails from prominent figures in the Providence College community, such as Dean Sears, Father Justin Brophy O.P., and Father Kenneth Sicard, O.P. ’78, ’82G’, were sent out to the student body, briefly addressing the racism that has become synonymous with PC’s culture. Such messages spoke to how dire the situation was and still is. This show lived on campus throughout this. Art creates culture, and PC is in desperate need of a cultural shift.
Megginson works with multiple exposure photography; there is no clear line where the images of her own body and the images of the places she is inhabiting begin or end. Her limbs become one with the ground beneath her feet, her hair curls and twists alongside the branches and leaves of a tree. Double consciousness underscores the entirety of this exhibit. Megginson speaks of how, as a Black woman, she is aware of the version of herself that she knows, and the version that other people project onto her. “Re-Framing Nature” explores her intertwinement with nature, where none of that matters. Nature cannot find itself conforming to or projecting societal norms and expectations, and it doesn’t expect that of her.
As with any artwork, there are many ways to interpret Megginson’s work. Her images are certainly thought-provoking and address a subject that too few PC students regularly sit with. More often than not, however, visitors found themselves longing to reconnect with nature more than anything else. At each event, meeting, and workshop, there were visitors reminiscing. Nature invites us, in our ever-so-busy and oversaturated lives, to slow down and return to our simpler roots.
The show also featured an interactive aspect that invited viewers to interpret how they may come to find themselves within imagery of nature. Small photocards of images that Megginson took on her iPhone were available for visitors to look through and respond to on the back of the card. This exercise begs a larger question: how does the way we remember and perceive the natural world and the systems within it shape who we understand ourselves to be?
The exhibition has since ended, but you can find information and photographs of the exhibit online at pcgalleries.providence.edu. Keep an eye out for future exhibitions at both the Reilly Gallery at the Smith Center for the Arts and the Hunt-Cavanagh Gallery at Hunt-Cavanagh Hall.