MIAMI, FLA.- The SCAD Museum of Art presents the exhibition i feel ya: SCAD + André 3000 Benjamin, on view Wednesday, December 3 through Sunday, December 14, 2014, at Mana Miami (318 NW 23rd Street, Wynwood). The exhibition explores fashion, film, and painting through the work of artist, musician, performer, fashion innovator, and actor André 3000 Benjamin (aka André 3000), filmmaker Greg Brunkalla, and painter Jimmy O’Neal.

More than a casual affirmation, i feel ya is an invitation to think critically and consider rhetorical expression. Phrases printed on custom jumpsuits designed by André 3000 Benjamin initiate a powerful exchange, reflected in Jimmy O’Neal’s large-scale abstract paintings alongside an experimental film directed by Greg Brunkalla.

Shown together here for the first time, Benjamin’s 47 jumpsuits were originally created for the 2014 worldwide tour celebrating 20 years of Outkast’s music history. Revealing a sampling of Benjamin’s musings and observations—a response to today’s content-heavy digital landscape, which provides an unrelenting flood of images and opinions—i feel ya engages viewers as vital participants in a socially dynamic conversation.

Another central feature of i feel ya is a commissioned film, Trumpets, conceived and directed by SCAD alumnus Greg Brunkalla and produced at SCAD’s Savannah Film Studios, a 22,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility. The film uses the thoughts and expressions on the jumpsuits as a creative point of departure to build a broader conversation about language and context. Two projectors cast words and phrases onto a single surface without syncing to the film itself—a spontaneous effect that creates a wholly unique experience for each audience and screening.

“SCAD is a place of convergence for smart, creative people,” said SCAD President and Founder Paula Wallace. “This exhibition is a collaboration in the truest sense—André’s singular style is illuminated by the brilliant work of SCAD alumni artists.”

“As I initially thought about displaying this collection, I immediately knew I that wanted to work with my longtime collaborative partners at SCAD. The diverse group of people that come to Miami for Art Basel in Miami Beach are the right audience to see this for the first time," offered Benjamin.

As a versatile artist in music, performance, fashion design, and film, André 3000 Benjamin has his finger on the pulse of contemporary culture. Benjamin’s identity as an artist took flight in the pages of a sketchbook he kept as a teenager, and he later rose to international fame as a member of the six-time Grammy-Award-winning musical group Outkast—the first hip-hop act to earn the coveted Album of the Year Grammy for 2004’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which sold more than 11 million copies. Benjamin has been a longtime supporter of SCAD, particularly through the university’s Collaborative Learning Center, an interdisciplinary learning community that facilitates sponsored projects between SCAD students and external partners.

Greg Brunkalla’s recent work includes interactive installations and advertisements for Nike, HP, and Lincoln; music videos for Vampire Weekend; and a series of intimate celebrity interviews for The New York Times and W titled Screen Tests, which earned him three Emmy nominations and a Webby Award. Brunkalla earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Television from SCAD in 2001. He is represented by Skunk, the Los Angeles-based production company that supported the making of Trumpets.

Jimmy O’Neal has exhibited paintings, videos, installations, and performance art in galleries and museums around the world. In 2003, his "brain machine," a device that paints from EEG connections to the artist, was included in Painting 4, a large-scale exhibition at the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University in Massachusetts that included his work alongside paintings by Ingrid Calame, Katharina Grosse, and Michael Lin. His large-scale mirrored work The Nine Muses (2007) is permanently installed at Atlanta’s Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. O’Neal earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from SCAD in 1989.

i feel ya is curated by Laurie Ann Farrell, SCAD’s Executive Director of Exhibitions, who oversees the SCAD Museum of Art and SCAD galleries in Savannah, Atlanta, Lacoste, and Hong Kong. Farrell also directs SCAD’s annual deFINE ART program—a three-day showcase of contemporary art, taking place February 17-19, 2015, in Savannah and Atlanta—which features special exhibitions, commissions, student showcases, performances, and lectures by prominent figures in the art world. From 1999 to 2007, Farrell was curator at the Museum for African Art in New York City. In 2006, she organized the American participation at the inaugural Trienal de Luanda in Angola, and in 2010, she was co-recipient of an Abraaj Capital Art Prize with artist Kader Attia. Widely published in art journals, Farrell has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

After its premiere in Miami, i feel ya: SCAD + André 3000 Benjamin travels to the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Ga. where it will be on view in summer 2015.