A record and rendition of the land posits the racialized body as a porous, unfixed site and embodied geography through which cultural histories of memory and place are inscribed and rearticulated. Working in self-portraiture, film, and poetry, Stone’s images enter a dialogue with her ancestors by reimagining their presence within the American landscape. Working extensively across the American South and major metropolitan cities, she retraces echoes of migration by unearthing histories long subdued or erased. Stone creates a causeway where lyricism meets abstraction, shaping new articulations of female subjectivity. In this unfolding, terrain becomes both witness and participant transformed into a site of return and remembrance.

Chanell Stone (b. Los Angeles) is an artist living and working in Oakland, California. her practice examines the phenomenology of the female body as both a geographic site and physical material embedded within the American landscape.

Stone earned her MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego, and her BFA in Photography from the California College of the Arts. Her work had been featured in The New York Times, NPR, FOAM, and Aperture, as well as a solo presentation at the San Diego Museum of Art that opened in March 2026 and group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2024); Esker Foundation, Alberta (2024); San Francisco (2022); Museo Cabañas, Guadalajara (2021); and Fotografiska New York (2020). Her work is held in multiple public and private collections including, the Carnegie Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Diego Museum of Art, KADIST Foundation and Center for Photography at Woodstock.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM. Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.