The stories that inspired some of artist V.L. Cox’s best-known works, The Poetry of Identity, was presented by Studio Theater in Exile, Hudson Valley MOCA, and brought together three writers to explore themes of identity, memory, and personal experience through the lens of The Conscience of a Nation exhibition, which was displayed at the museum last year. The presentation is available for viewing here.

The event was part of an interdisciplinary series developed around the work of Cox, a Peekskill resident artist whose work has addressed issues related to human rights, discrimination, and historical memory for decades. Her best-known project, the End Hate Doors series, uses original doors to examine the legacy of segregation and other forms of social exclusion in the United States.

For this presentation, artistic director Mara Mills invited poets Edward Currelley, Sarah Bracey White, and Elizabeth Burk to respond, through their own experiences, to the questions raised by Cox’s work. The result will be a reading of original texts built from memories, places, personal influences, and experiences that shaped each author’s life.

Currelley is a poet, writer, and visual artist, as well as the author of In Two Parts and a Pushcart Prize nominee. White, meanwhile, is an acclaimed storyteller and writer from the American South whose work spans poetry, essays, theater, and memoir. In 2024, she received an Artists Award from ArtsWestchester to develop the project Living on Stage: My Life in Drama. Burk completes the panel of authors assembled for this literary exploration of identity and individual experience. Burk is a poet, psychologist, and author of the poetry collections Learning to Love Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase, and Duet: Poet & Photographer, the latter created in collaboration with her photographer husband.