The 99
The 99
exhibit by emily rice
at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
July 28 – Sept 4
Woolfolks Gallery
The 99 is the next exhibit coming to the BCRI’s Woolfolk Gallery.
Curated by Birmingham native Emily Rice, the exhibit includes artwork that represents each of the city’s 99 neighborhoods. The project aims to reckon with Birmingham’s history of segregation and inequality, and how these realities shaped the geography of the Magic City.
Preserving and honoring the collective memory of Birmingham’s 99 neighborhoods allows us to construct purpose and meaning. The 99 invites viewers into conversation about this meaning, and about where the city can grow from here.
The exhibit features pieces from Rice’s original exhibits 99 Neighborhoods I & II, including 99 miniature wooden sculptures of homes that correspond in scale and character with each neighborhood. Rice also sourced sediment, soil, and vegetation from each neighborhood, converting them into art materials included in the exhibit.
About Emily Rice
Emily Rice (b. 1993, Birmingham, AL) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Southern US. Growing up and living in the South, its landscapes and histories consistently enter their practice with motifs and materiality. Rice explores material agency, sustainable relationships, hybridized language, and hopeful dreaming through a queer lens. With drawing, painting, digital media, sculpture, and installation, they elevate materials into new realms depending on perceived connections between sites and objects. Investigating and reshaping materials is their method for transfiguration and a way to gather time together. Their works are manifestations of a believed and beloved reality, examining the fascia between relationships.
Rice earned their MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They received a BFA in Art and Spanish from Birmingham-Southern College and studied Advanced Liberal Arts at the Universitat de Barcelona. Recent exhibitions and research include Capricornus with Jules Jackson at the St. Andrews Center (2025), IMPETUS curated by Maritza Bautista at Laredo College (2025), Riddles of the Ground with Sandra Amoabeng at Texas A&M International University (2025), Gleaning the Spirit at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture (2023), Givens at the Candoro Marble Building (2022), and installation work as a Fulbright Creative Research Scholar to learn more about their Honduran heritage (2023-2024). Emily currently lives between Tennessee and Texas where they make art and teach Painting and Drawing at Texas A&M International University.