Graeme Mortimer Evelyn is a multimedia visual artist, musician, and curator. He has developed a reputation for creating work that is situated in places of worship, municipal buildings, and sites of memory that reorient these settings and philosophies by engaging input from the local community as a self-described “bridge-builder.” He was raised Baptist-Pentecostal alongside Rastafarianism, later converting to Buddhism, and his spiritual experiences deeply inform his practice, as does his synesthesia. 

His intention is that his art acts as a catalyst, attracting new audiences to engage in meaningful dialogues surrounding art and art-making. His artistic process considers all stakeholders’ needs and aspirations to enable nuanced forms of sharing specific public spaces, especially sacred spaces and houses of worship. Based in London and of Jamaican heritage, he has produced a varied body of work commenting on cultural social identity, the politics of historical entanglements, and the psychological sensitivities involved in creating relevant work for spiritual spaces. He describes these narratives forming “when fragments of relation, memory, society, identity, and modernity, which seem disparate at first, come together to form a whole.” 

In his Charleston studio, Evelyn continued his drawing practice, and during his time in Charleston he also composed a reflective text that articulates a framework for how artists and institutions might engage sacred spaces for making site-specific work, as well as ways in which spiritual leaders and houses of worship can instigate collaborations with artists to support the creation of contemporary art. He engaged in research, dialogue, and teaching while in Charleston, working with local faith communities and College of Charleston students.