Kayla Fuentes sat on the red stool at the “Cecelia Moseley: Remnants of Language” exhibit at the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience in Meridian, holding a pencil and a hot-pink sticky note.
“I’m not sure what to write,” she told museum education director Heather LaCoste.
“It’s up to you,” LaCoste said. She pointed out a yellow Post-It with a long note and then an orange one that contained only a name.
Fuentes finally penned a few lines on the note and stuck it onto the crowded wall. She and her colleague admired the other exhibits on the gray walls of the small room a final time before exiting the building and passing a glass-paneled stairway filled with a colorful mix of words and doodles in varying fonts and colors.
Some of the words are easy to read, while others force the viewer to focus harder to decipher the messages. They resemble the sketches that Moseley once drew in the margins of her notebook to escape the frustration of learning.
“That installation is called ‘Everything All At Once,’” MAX President and CEO Penny Kemp told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 4. “It’s about how (Cecelia) sees words and languages. Some of the expressions and phrases you can read, and some of them you can’t. It’s designed to kind of show what it’s like from her viewpoint, and the challenges with letters and numbers and things getting jumbled up, and how she sees things.”
When Differences Breed Determination
Doctors diagnosed Moseley with dyslexia when she was in the second grade. Teachers pulled the Meridian, Mississippi, native from class to give her extra help, and her parents eventually transferred her from public to private school. Her parents found tutors and specialists to help her, but she still struggled.
“Learning was a real challenge for her in school,” Kemp said. “She didn’t learn traditional ways, and she got engaged and interested in the arts.”
Dyslexia is a language-based learning difference. People with dyslexia often struggle with academic learning due to deficits in language skills, particularly word recognition, decoding and spelling. The International Dyslexia Association reports that as many as 15-20% of the population as a whole has symptoms of dyslexia.
When Kemp read of Moseley’s success, she knew the Meridian native’s work was perfect for the MAX.
“From the moment I learned about Cecelia’s journey as an artist, I wanted to see her work—and her story—shared by The MAX,” Kemp said in an Aug. 7 press release. “Watching her excel far beyond expectations while grappling with learning differences is such an important message that points to the transformative power of the arts. The fact that she’s a skilled welder and (that) only 5% of welders are women adds another level of engaging storytelling and inspiration for youth.”
Moseley, a girl who once hated school, is now a college professor. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Mississippi in 2020 and a Masters of Fine Arts in sculpture at Louisiana State University in 2024. This fall, she is teaching mixed media at Samford University in Homewood, Alabama.
“My work is about dyslexia and dyslexia as a reading disorder,” Moseley told M&M magazine in a 2021 article. “You can’t really understand what a dyslexic person feels, and I think that’s what I love about 3D, because it’s a way that you can.”
The mixed-media artist creates vibrant, colorful art with abstract shapes. She has art on display across the country, including installations in Mississippi at the Mississippi Children’s Museum in Meridian, the Mathews-Sanders Sculpture Garden in Cleveland, the Yokna Sculpture Trail in Oxford, and the Hattiesburg Alliance for Public Art in Hattiesburg.
For the installation at the MAX, Kemp presented Moseley with a blank canvas at the museum. Moseley created each piece as an original work specifically for the exhibition. The installation took more than a year of planning and work. Moseley created most of the sculptures in her Alabama studio. They were then loaded onto a truck and brought to Meridian. Once there, Moseley and her team installed the sculptures and wall art. A video in the museum’s upstairs gallery reflects the process from start to finish.
“We basically took her in that space and said, ‘You imagine what you want to create in this space. We want to tell your story about growing up with these learning differences and how it influenced your art, and we want to tell that story so you figure out how you want to activate the space.’ She did that,” Kemp said.
Connections and Hope
Kemp said she hopes students with learning differences can connect with the exhibit and see the potential for their own futures.
“We’re looking forward to having a lot of students come through and share with us how it’s impacting them,” Kemp told the Mississippi Free Press. “I think that they are going to be hopeful, number one, about their path. It might not make sense now, and they’re wondering why everything has to feel so difficult. But I do believe that they’re going to leave with a sense of inspiration for what their path might be. I also think they’re going to leave knowing that they’re not alone in this.”
Moseley told LaCoste that her own experience with learning challenges shaped the beginnings of the Meridian installation, but the exhibition also reflects on the transition of written language. She sees the installation as a way to document the loss of written language. She hopes this resonates with readers, even if they cannot relate to her learning differences, and they leave with a deeper understanding of how language evolves.
LaCoste said she has already seen this happen since the exhibit’s August 23 opening.
“You’ll see some people have responded with notes to Cecilia,” LaCoste said, standing in front of the wall of Post-It notes on Sept. 4. “Others have left behind what this means to them. I know Cecilia really wants to keep these. She’s interested in people’s responses.”
“We see an array of styles of writing. But also, every now and then, you’ll see someone else whom you know has been diagnosed with dyslexia, and what this exhibition means to them,” she added. “We’ve had people leave tearful that, finally, this (feeling) is expressed in a way that other people can understand. So I think this is a joyful reminder of what people are leaving with.”
“Remnants of Language” will be on display through Jan. 3, 2026. For more information, visit the exhibit’s webpage on the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience website.
