The Ellis Gallery at ARTS Southeast
October 2 — December 12, 2026
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, October 2, from 5 - 9PM
In conjunction with Starland First Fridays
With continuing receptions each First Friday through December 4, 2026.
ARTS Southeast is pleased to present No one belongs here more than you, a group exhibition featuring photographers working across the South: Josh Aronson, Marsalis Eason, Robin Elise Maaya, Anna Ottum, and José Ibarra Rizo. These artists are exploring the idea of relationships – between sisters, friends, young men, and family – and their place in larger communities. A sense of belonging is key, and these five emerging photographers ask us to explore our own sense of belonging alongside them as they capture the complex experience of connection.
Florida-based photographer Josh Aronson taps into the experience of existing in a wild landscape; belonging, yet separate. In his Florida Boys series, figures commune with nature and one another, navigating youth and masculinity in the dense swamp of the Everglades. “Florida Boys comes from my lived experience. I grew up in Florida, surrounded by its landscape – so much of my childhood played out outdoors. But I’ve always felt like an insider-outsider here. I was born in Toronto and moved to Florida when I was three, and that lens – of being home but also apart – shaped how I see this place and the people in it.” (Josh Aronson in Impulse Magazine, Feb 2025 by Xuezhu Jenny Wang)
In his series Somewhere Between, Atlanta-based photographer José Ibarra Rizo walks a different line, documenting the migrant experience in the American South with both urgency and sensitivity. Having immigrated with his mother at a young age, he reflects on “the distancing from it that occurs over time,” drawing it back up through his work and confronting complex narratives. His subjects sometimes face away from the camera, protecting their identities while asserting their presence; at other times, they choose to make eye contact. Exploring cultural memory and identity, Rizo’s images show people standing in their communities; gardening, embracing, playing soccer at sunset.
Stepping into the arena of Black rodeo culture around the South, Savannah photographer Marsalis Eason speaks about the intimacy and humanity of the behind-the-scenes moments he documents in his series Hedge of Protection. Some images show the action of these high-octane events, while others quietly lift the curtain on the rituals and relationships behind them. Moments of anticipation, prayer, pride and celebration have kept him coming back, getting to know cowboys young and old along the way.
Robin Elise Maaya’s Dani and Beni is a near decade-long series documenting twin sisters as they grow up alongside one another, echoing and mirroring each other as entangled individuals. Their faces emerge from dark water; hair and limbs twist together in stark black and white. Marking the passage of time in her images of these sisters, it's easy to consider our own evolution as we are able to see theirs side by side.
Anna Ottum has documented everyone from “nail artists to rodeo queens, arctic explorers to pop stars, monster truck drivers to New York City’s youth…celebrating dynamic characters and subcultures through intimate portraiture.” Perhaps her most intimate series is displayed here as the artist explores the small island town of Seal Harbor, Maine. After losing her mother at the age of three, Anna generously takes us along on her journey of learning about her mother through her aunts and revisiting the family home.
No one belongs here more than you is made possible with investment by the City of Savannah. This program is also made possible with support from the Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts also receives support from its partner agency - the National Endowment for the Arts. Thank you to our exhibition sponsors: Starlandia Art Supply, James & Ellen Ivey, Marilyn Brady & Dave Henry, and Lynn Berkowitz.
about the artists
Josh Aronson (b. 1994, Canada) is a Miami-based artist whose work explores masculinity and landscape in the American South. His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Frieze, Italian Vogue, Teen Vogue, Dazed, i-D, and others.
Aronson’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions including Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (Florida), Vizcaya Museum and Gardens (Florida), NSU Art Museum (Florida), and Ogden Museum of Southern Art (Louisiana), among others.
Marsalis Eason is a photojournalist based in Savannah, Georgia, who documents Black events and everyday life in an effort to highlight the full spectrum of the Black experience — from the pageantry of Black rodeos and cowboy culture to the shine of a car show and the rituals of family and celebration.
Working in medium format film and digital, he shifts fluidly between wide, unfolding scenes and intimate close detail, preserving moments that pass down through generations. His photographs have been exhibited at Telfair Museums’ Jepson Museum, Savannah State University, and ARTS Southeast, and are held in the Dr. Walter and Linda Evans Collection.
Robin Elise Maaya (b. 1998) is a multidisciplinary artist and photographer based in Savannah, Georgia. Having held a camera since she was eight years old, Maaya has developed a practice rooted in visual storytelling, using photography to document the ordinary, intimate, and often overlooked moments of the human experience. Infuenced by photographic pioneers such as Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, and Francesca Woodman, her work explores memory, identity, vulnerability, grief, and the passage of time through a distinctly personal and emotionally charged lens.
At the center of Maaya’s current photographic practice is X ≠ X: A Study of Mirror Modi Identical Twins, an ongoing eight-year project documenting mirror modi identical twins Dani and Beni. Beginning as an exploration of their shared identity and unusual physical symmetry, the project has evolved into an intimate, long-term study of individuality, connection, and the ways identity shifts over time. Maaya continues to photograph the twins as the project approaches its ten-year mark in 2028, when she plans to present the work in a large-scale exhibition.
While photography remains at the root of Maaya’s practice, her artistic process has increasingly expanded beyond the camera. A lifelong interest in tactile materials and other artistic mediums has led her toward painting, beadwork, felting, sculpture, collage, mixed media, and experimental forms of image-making. This evolution has allowed her to explore ideas that photography alone cannot always contain, while continuing to approach each medium with the same instinct for storytelling, documentation, and emotional honesty.
Across her work, Maaya is drawn to the tension between the familiar and the hidden - the stories embedded within people, places, relationships, and memories. Whether working through photography or increasingly through physical and material forms, her practice is an ongoing investigation of what it means to document a life while simultaneously making sense of it.
Anna Ottum is a photographer whose subjects range from nail artists to rodeo queens, arctic explorers to pop stars, monster truck drivers to New York City’s youth. Collectively, her photographs celebrate dynamic characters and subcultures through intimate portraiture.
Her work has been featured by Forbes, Interview Magazine, i-D Magazine, VICE, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal; her client list includes American Eagle, Adidas, Neiman Marcus, Netflix, and Nike, among many others.
José Ibarra Rizo (American, born Mexico, b. 1992) is a lens-based artist based in Atlanta, GA. His work explores cultural memory, migration, and identity, with a focus on the migrant experience in the American South.
He was awarded the inaugural Emerging Artist Fellowship by the Atlanta Center for Photography, named a finalist for the 2022 Aperture Portfolio Prize, recognized as one of three recipients of the 2022 Atlanta Artadia Awards, selected as a 2023–2024 Working Artist Project Fellow by MOCA GA, named a 2025 PhotoWork Senior Fellow, and selected as a 2026–2027 Artist-in-Residence by The Creatives Project.
José’s work is held in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and the Michael C. Carlos Museum. His clients include Rolling Stone, TIME, and The New York Times.
