1708 Gallery - InLight

RICHMOND — 1708 Gallery’s 16th Annual InLight will take place Friday, November 3rd and Saturday, November 4, 2023 along the 200 to 400 blocks of West Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia’s downtown Arts District. InLight is 1708 Gallery’s annual two-night exhibition of light-based contemporary public art that moves to a new location each year. Past sites have included Bryan Park, Chimborazo Park, Great Shiplock Park, and the sculpture garden and grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

In recent years, InLight has pushed the boundaries of its original form – a light-based media festival – to meaningfully engage notions of place and new modes of creativity and presentation in contemporary art. Reflection and Refraction honors InLight’s fifteen-year history, its roots as a light-based festival, and its present and future as a contemporary art exhibition of site-specific, multimedia works in the public sphere. Just as InLight’s form has changed and dispersed – refracted – so have the blocks surrounding 1708 Gallery. Reflection and Refraction brings InLight home to 1708 Gallery and the surrounding businesses to highlight how art continues to activate and animate one of Richmond’s main arteries and thriving areas – downtown Broad Street.

For this year’s exhibition, 1708 invites regional, national, and international artists working in all media and disciplines to submit entries that engage with and respond to Reflection and Refraction and that imagine new media and installation possibilities to honor the past, present, and future of InLight.

Artists are invited to propose projects that engage with and expand upon the histories and activities that comprise InLight, as well as Broad Street’s past, present, and future. These include the industrial, economic, and racial histories of downtown Richmond and their legacies; public transit and mobility; regional and commercial architectures and their many styles; the role of public art in the upper South; and the significance of Broad Street’s surrounding communities.