Any conversation about the most important artists and experimental filmmakers working over the past quarter century would be incomplete without the name Kevin Jerome Everson. His distinctive and singularly nuanced work blends documentary and fiction to articulate the profound within the ordinariness of everyday life. Kevin will be present to introduce and discuss a collection of his short works, ranging primarily from 2022-2024.  

Everson, who was born in the working-class community of Mansfield, Ohio, depicts details in the lives of people living and working in similar American communities. Everson approaches race, sexuality, and economic circumstances with a poetic yet unflinching eye. Adopting the stance of an observer, his interest in labor has both a political and a formal aspect, exploring the relationship between the human body and the materiality of the labor it performs as both an expression of class and identity, and as a performative gesture.  

Kevin Jerome Everson currently lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia where he is a Professor of Art at the University of Virginia. Everson has made nine feature films and over 130 short films, which have been exhibited internationally at film festivals including Sundance, Toronto, Venice, Rotterdam, Berlin, London, Ann Arbor and Oberhausen. Everson has been the subject of mid-career retrospectives at Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, 2017; Viennale,2014; Visions du Reel, Nyon, 2012; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2011; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2009. His work has been featured at the 2008, 2012 and 2017 Whitney Biennials and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial. 

Everson’s visit is made possible through the collaborative work of Short Ends Film Journal, the Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres, and the Union Cinema.