Artist Courtney Charles presents American Fairy Tale, a new photographic series on view for one week only at Gallery 444 in Provincetown. Developed in advance of the United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary, the exhibition reimagines foundational American figures and national myths through a contemporary lens. It is part satire, part dreamscape, and part act of reclamation.
Inspired in part by a moment during the Democratic National Convention in which a speaker called for reclaiming the American flag as a symbol that belongs to everyone, Charles began thinking about American iconography not as something owned by any one party, ideology, or group, but as a shared visual language. American Fairy Tale grows from that impulse: to make work rooted in the country’s founding mythology that feels open, expansive, and available to all.
“As a queer artist, it feels important to make work that insists this country and its symbols belong to all of us,” says Charles. “The flag stands for diversity and inclusivity too. I wanted to reimagine the stories we’ve been told with a modern twist and create imagery that people could laugh with, connect to, and hopefully see themselves in.”
Across the series, Charles transforms familiar historical narratives into lush, stylized tableaux that blend humor, glamour, and critique. The works play with the tension between inherited myth and contemporary identity, asking what it means to revisit the stories that shaped the nation and who gets to inhabit them now. In a moment of deep division, American Fairy Tale offers a different approach: not didactic, but imaginative; not nostalgic, but revisionist. Presented as diptychs and triptychs alongside contemporary companion images, the works create a deliberate contrast between national mythology and present-day reality.
One of the series’ central images, Golden Hour, reimagines Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved poet who became the first published African-American in 1773, as a modern influencer, free to travel and pursue her artistic life fully. Charles was drawn to Wheatley not only for her historical significance, but for the emotional and spiritual resonance in her work. Several of Wheatley’s poems reference the sun, which Charles connects to the African spirituality Wheatley carried with her. That connection made the sunrise an essential part of the composition.
“I create universes for people to escape to,” Charles says, “with the hope that they bring a sense of possibility back with them and maybe see ways this universe could be better.”
Humor plays a key role throughout the series. Many of the images are intentionally absurd, camp, or delightfully anachronistic. For Charles, that laughter is not separate from the politics of the work, but part of it. The reimagined scenes loosen the grip of official history and open space for new emotional relationships to the American story.
Alongside the new series, the exhibition will include select works from earlier bodies of work, including images from Charles’s Doll Series, previously exhibited at Adam Peck Gallery in 2018.
At once playful and pointed, American Fairy Tale invites viewers to reconsider the myths surrounding the birth of the nation and to imagine a broader, more inclusive ownership of those stories. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, American Fairy Tale asks what it means to reclaim national mythology in a way that is expansive, inclusive, and alive.
About Courtney Charles
Courtney Charles is a New York-based photographer working across portraiture, constructed narratives, and fine-art photography. Their practice explores identity, mythology, and visual culture through staged imagery influenced by editorial photography, performance, and historical representation. Their work has been exhibited in New York, Provincetown, Los Angeles, and Miami. Works from their Doll Series are forthcoming in Doll Dressing at The Museum at FIT in September 2026, accompanied by a publication from Rizzoli.
Courtney Charles : American Fairy Tale
May 28-June 2, 2026
Gallery 444
444 Commercial Street
Provincetown, MA
www.gallery444ptown.com
Open daily, 11 AM-6 PM
Opening reception: Friday, May 29, 6-9 PM
