One of the most eye-catching centerpieces of The South Got Something to Say is a sitting room installation honoring the Black, woman-centered pop culture of artist Morgan Newton’s youth.
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It’s not hyperbole to call Morgan Newton one of today’s most exciting emerging Houston artists. The second show of her career, The South Got Something to Say at Sanman Studios downtown, reveals that she’s already well on her way to someday being mentioned in the same breath as local visual arts legends like JooYoung Choi, Trenton Hancock Doyle, and Rachel Hecker. She presents an assured, cohesive vision that intentionally bridges cultural gaps between the experiences of Black women in the South and viewers who recognize their own lives in the terrestrial and human geographies in her works. Night skies full of planets and stars bring this theme together, which is on view until February 1.
“I wanted to do the whole universal background with it, because when I was younger, I used to visit my great aunt and uncle in South Park,” Newton says. “He had a telescope, and we would look at the stars over South Park…I was thinking, ‘What if I got to create my own universe and show people what that looked like?’”
In Newton’s universe, her family dances ebulliently in their kitchen. Women show off their braids, jewelry, and sets as planets unto themselves, lit from behind by sparkling starlight. Houston iconography knits together in celebratory collages full of swangas, Timmy Chan signs, Celebration Station, chicken and waffles, and other reminders of our city’s shared cultural touchpoints.
Gratitude blossoms from that fertile creative soil, and she carried her whole heart to her Sanman artist residency, which ran from February until December 2024. Newton developed The South Got Something to Say during her time at the studio and challenged herself to experiment in media beyond the familiar paint. Branching out was her way of honoring the influential people and pop culture figures—mainly women—who inspire her.
“With this particular subject, you have to use imagery. I’ve never done [mixed media] before,” Newton says. “Although I did get kind of discouraged, it stuck. I think I’m going to attempt to try new things.”
Where When I Think of Home emphasized her self-reflection, The South Got Something to Say centers those who led her on that path. The show is named after a quote by André 3000 at the 1995 Source Awards, which became a clarion call for rappers from Atlanta, Memphis, Houston, and across the South who felt overshadowed by an industry more enamored with talent in New York and Los Angeles. It’s a sentiment Newman also associates with Southern Black women both in and out of the music world.
“I wanted to cover Black Southern womanhood. I also started thinking about Black Southern women rappers and how they don’t get their just due or their credit in the industry. So I was like, ‘What if I combined a gratitude exhibition to them?’” she says.
Morgan Newton’s collage work celebrates so many of the people, places, and cultural touchstones that make Houston Houston.
One of the most striking pieces in the show occupies an entire corner of the gallery. With walls painted purple in contrast to the gallery’s usual white, it appears as a welcoming sitting room, with a chair (please don’t sit on the art), end table, and posters of the rappers, musicians, actresses, models who—and movies that—made her proud to be a Black woman: Eve’s Bayou, Tatyana Ali, Beauty Shop, Tyra Banks, and many others. The end table pulls double duty as a shrine to the Southern women rappers who have since passed: Holly Thomas (Megan Thee Stallion’s mother), Memphis’s Gangsta Boo and Princess Loko, and Magnolia Shorty from New Orleans.
Next to the sitting room installation hangs an ethereal series of cyanotypes—a printing process that creates a cyan blue image—depicting CD liner notes from women who built rap careers from themselves in the South. Printed on cotton, these works waft gently in the gallery’s AC, a deliberately ghostly spectacle illustrating how women’s creativity is allowed to fade away into the background.
There’s a distinct emphasis on Houstonians in this work, such as Enjoli from Screwed Up Click and Carmen Ruth, also known as 380 Dat Lady. Newton interviewed many of the living performers for this exhibition to make sure they consented to being featured, as well as to catalogue their stories and educate herself on critical voices in rap and hip-hop, even flying out to Atlanta to meet Ruth in person. Lez Moné and Cl’Che’, who also feature in the cyanotypes and collages, showed up to the opening to take part in the celebrations. It’s a point of pride for Newton, to be able to thank her influences in person. They gave her the confidence to bring her assured, accomplished vision to Sanman Studios, and beyond into a promising visual arts career to keep an eye on in the years to come.
“Seeing their processes and seeing how they advocate for themselves and working hard… I’m trying to think of how they navigated life with their artistry. It is very inspiring. Seeing the beauty in that is something that I wanted to highlight,” Newton says. “So it helps me as an artist, learning to advocate for myself and being protective over my things, right? And also wanting to recognize them, since they weren’t really recognized.”
Know Before You Go
The South Got Something to Say will be running at Sanman Studios until February 1. Admission is free. For more information, visit the gallery’s website.
