Kelly Taylor Mitchell Studio Newsletter: November

Author

Kelly Taylor Mitchell
November 03, 2025

Hi Y’all,

Going to keep this one short, sweet and full of feeling!

Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open

I am so very happy to share that my solo exhibition Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open is on view from November 21st, 2025 to April 26, 2026 at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Brick dust detail, 2023. Photo Credit: Nydia Blas

This show; nearly three years in the making, follows the SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellowship that brought me to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil for the Festival of Yemayá in 2022. This exhibition also feels like a full circle moment, 2025 marks ten years since I graduated from The MFA’s neighbor institution The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA). I remember being introduced to papermaking at SMFA, in Michelle Samour’s class, with no idea how this tactile sensorial process would change the way I think, work, and feel as an artist.

The show shares handmade paper, textiles, and a new artist book edition. The title, an excerpt from a Romare Bearden quote, reflects (I hope) the feelings of hunger, vulnerability, and urgency that exist for me in the making and learning of this work. Work that I am so very excited to share with you!

Public programming will take place in February, details soon. Read the full press release here and visit the exhibition page below:

Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open

In 2022, Atlanta- and San Juan–based artist Kelly Taylor Mitchell (b. 1994) traveled to Brazil’s Bahia region, home to one of the largest populations of maroons or quilombolas, descendants of formerly enslaved people who self-emancipated. There, she attended the annual festival of Iemanjá (Yemayá), which celebrates the Candomblé orixá, or goddess of the sea. She witnessed this and other ever-evolving spiritual traditions, in which elements of West African Yoruban rites and European Catholicism have fused.

www.mfa.org/exhibition/kelly-taylor-mitchell-mouth-wide-open

❝

“ I think the artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.”

— Romare Bearden

Tune in!

Can’t make it to Boston? I hope you will enjoy the exhibition playlist:

Salvador, Brazil sidewalk. During my fellowship I became obsessed with the synchronicities between this visual language and that of quilting. Keep an eye out for references in my work.

With feeling,

KTM