Michaela Pilar Brown's solo art exhibition, "Liquor and Watermelon Will Kill You," will be shown in the Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery at Coastal Carolina University from Monday, Oct. 19, to Friday, Nov. 20. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, Oct. 22, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the gallery. Admission to the gallery and reception is free and open to the public.

Brown, of Columbia S.C., studied sculpture and art history at Howard University. Her mother worked as a security guard for an art museum and spent much of her time there, which formed Michaela's passion for art. Her work explores the human body in a variety of contexts: age, gender, race and sexuality. She uses photography, performance art, painting and other media to explore everything from cultural hierarchies related to beauty to the challenges of race and gender.

"I [explore] issues of identity and notions of otherness as defined in American standards of beauty using a combination of performance and staged photography to create work that is at once confrontational and seductive," says Brown.

She was the Fall 2011 Harvey B. Gantt Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, N.C., and a 2012 recipient of an artist grant from the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt. Her work has been exhibited at McColl Center in Charlotte, N.C., the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, and Artfields in Lake City.

The Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery is in Room 129 of the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts, located at 133 Chanticleer Drive, Conway. The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information, contact Jim Arendt, gallery director, at 843-349-6454 or jarendt@coastal.edu.