Mo Costello’s Untitled (Cleveland Ave.), 2025, presents a close-up view of a telephone pole, its ragged wooden surface almost entirely obscured by a battalion of rusted staples. I wonder what might have appeared on this erstwhile public bulletin board. Perhaps ads for handyman services, or notices about missing cats and local queer parties—maybe even a flyer or two about nearby MAGA rallies. It’s extraordinary how a commonplace fixture in any town or city can be used as a platform to reflect the wide-ranging needs, hopes, and desires of any given community. The pole sits on Cleveland Avenue in Fulton County, Georgia, where Donald Trump was indicted for his interference in the 2020 presidential election—a harrowing moment in which he tried to nullify the voice of the people. Flecked with a handful of small black-and-white photographs, Costello’s solo exhibition at the Atlanta Center for Photography, “Forming sounds with my mouth to approximate something that’s like a flood,” examined the ways the populace can make itself heard, particularly when it is not given any direct or obvious means to do so.
Untitled (Riot), 2025, is a photo of a tenebrous interior. There is a bit of light, illuminating the top of a dumpster pushed up against a group of storefront windows. The middle one is smashed—glass shards litter the foreground. We don’t know what caused the destruction here, but the work’s title gives us a clue. I was transported back to the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when people were wreaking havoc across Atlanta in agonized response to the murder of Rayshard Brooks, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, by local police in June 2020. The city exploded in a fit of righteous fury—protesters torched the site of his murder, while Trump, during his first term as president, threatened to deploy the National Guard to quell the unrest. With this in mind, the phantom violence of the picture softens into sadness. I understand the kind of anger that fueled the devastation, especially as one of the largest green spaces in Georgia’s capital is deforested to clear the way for what is colloquially known as Cop City—a training complex for law enforcement—as we yet again suffer another four years under Trump’s authoritarianism.
Tucked around the corner from this piece was a more palliative object. Untitled (100 Broad), 2017, is a framed zine. Its cover, a solarized gelatin silver print, depicts a cabinet inside Atlanta’s now-defunct arts space Murmur Media—part of the work’s title refers to the gallery’s street address. The cupboard is full of first-aid supplies, such as bandages, gauze, and antiseptics—materials that were given to injured protestors by Murmur’s staff during the demonstrations for Brooks and George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police in May 2020. Costello made hundreds of copies similar to this publication and handed them out to various businesses (pharmacies, convenience stores) throughout Georgia’s Clarke, Fulton, and Jackson counties. Inside the displayed booklet are excerpts from Samuel R. Delaney’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), a treatise on the gentrification of the namesake Manhattan neighborhood that, in a previous life, was a popular gathering place—full of peep shows, porn theaters, and brothels—for every stripe of hedonist and sexual outlaw. The artist’s reader seemed to me like essential samizdat, a queer lifeline for those struggling to live in a red and deeply religious US state.
A discrete sculpture, Situated Accommodation, 2025, has now become a permanent fixture at the center. Comprising a steel tread plate and concrete anchors, this piece covers the step leading into the gallery, which has made the space’s ground level wheelchair accessible. Here, the artist has provided an actual platform for those who need it most. This quiet gesture exemplifies the kind of activism that suffuses Costello’s practice—one that is elegant, subtle, and, most importantly, obstinately generous in its commitment to helping others.
