Issue 35 February 2024

Issue 34 November 2023

Issue 33 August 2023

Issue 32 June 2023

Issue 31 February 2023

Issue 30 November 2022

Issue 29 August 2022

Issue 28 May 2022

Issue 27 February 2022

Issue 26 November 2021

Issue 25 August 2021

Issue 24 May 2021

Issue 23 February 2021

Issue 22 November 2020

Issue 21 August 2020

Issue 20 May 2020

Issue 19 February 2020

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
Parasites in Love –Travis Diehl
To Crush Absolute On Patrick Staff and
Destroying the Institution
–Jonathan Griffin
Victoria Fu:
Camera Obscured
–Cat Kron
Resurgence of Resistance How Pattern & Decoration's Popularity
Can Help Reshape the Canon
–Catherine Wagley
Trace, Place, Politics Julie Mehretu's Coded Abstractions
–Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.: Featuring: Friedrich Kunath,
Tristan Unrau, and Nevine Mahmoud
–Claressinka Anderson & Joe Pugliese
Reviews April Street
at Vielmetter Los Angeles
–Aaron Horst

Chiraag Bhakta
at Human Resources
–Julie Weitz

Don’t Think: Tom, Joe
and Rick Potts

at POTTS
–Matt Stromberg

Sarah McMenimen
at Garden
–Michael Wright

The Medea Insurrection
at the Wende Museum
–Jennifer Remenchik

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Mike Kelley
at Hauser & Wirth
–Angella d’Avignon
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Issue 18 November 2019

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
The Briar and the Tar Nayland Blake at the ICA LA
and Matthew Marks Gallery
–Travis Diehl
Putting Aesthetics
to Hope
Tracking Photography’s Role
in Feminist Communities
– Catherine Wagley
Instagram STARtists
and Bad Painting
– Anna Elise Johnson
Interview with Jamillah James – Lindsay Preston Zappas
Working Artists Featuring Catherine Fairbanks,
Paul Pescador, and Rachel Mason
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Children of the Sun
at LADIES’ ROOM
– Jessica Simmons

Derek Paul Jack Boyle
at SMART OBJECTS
–Aaron Horst

Karl Holmqvist
at House of Gaga, Los Angeles
–Lee Purvey

Katja Seib
at Château Shatto
–Ashton Cooper

Jeanette Mundt
at Overduin & Co.
–Matt Stromberg
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Issue 17 August 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Green Chip David Hammons
at Hauser & Wirth
–Travis Diehl
Whatever Gets You
Through the Night
The Artists of Dilexi
and Wartime Trauma
–Jonathan Griffin
Generous Collectors How the Grinsteins
Supported Artists
–Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Donna Huanca
–Lindsy Preston Zappas
Working Artist Featuring Ragen Moss, Justen LeRoy,
and Bari Ziperstein
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Sarah Lucas
at the Hammer Museum
–Yxta Maya Murray

George Herms and Terence Koh
at Morán Morán
–Matt Stromberg

Hannah Hur
at Bel Ami
–Michael Wright

Sebastian Hernandez
at NAVEL
–Julie Weitz

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Alex Israel
at Greene Naftali
–Rosa Tyhurst

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Issue 16 May 2019

Trulee Hall's Untamed Magic Catherine Wagley
Ingredients for a Braver Art Scene Ceci Moss
I Shit on Your Graves Travis Diehl
Interview with Ruby Neri Jonathan Griffin
Carolee Schneemann and the Art of Saying Yes! Chelsea Beck
Exquisite L.A. Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Ry Rocklen
at Honor Fraser
–Cat Kron

Rob Thom
at M+B
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age
of Black Power, 1963-1983
at The Broad
–Matt Stromberg

Anna Sew Hoy & Diedrick Brackens
at Various Small Fires
–Aaron Horst

Julia Haft-Candell & Suzan Frecon
at Parrasch Heijnen
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Shahryar Nashat
at Swiss Institute
–Christie Hayden
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Issue 15 February 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor
Men on Women
Geena Brown
Eyes Without a Voice
Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto
Christina Catherine Martinez
Seven Minute Dream Machine
Jordan Wolfson's (Female figure)
Travis Diehl
Laughing in Private
Vanessa Place's Rape Jokes
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Rosha Yaghmai
Laura Brown
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Patrick Martinez,
Ramiro Gomez, and John Valadez
Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Outliers and American
Vanguard Art at LACMA
–Jonathan Griffin

Sperm Cult
at LAXART
–Matt Stromberg

Kahlil Joseph
at MOCA PDC
–Jessica Simmons

Ingrid Luche
at Ghebaly Gallery
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Matt Paweski
at Park View / Paul Soto
–John Zane Zappas

Trenton Doyle Hancock
at Shulamit Nazarian
–Colony Little

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Catherine Opie
at Lehmann Maupin
–Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 14 November 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Figurative Religion Catherine Wagley
Lynch in Traffic Travis Diehl
The Remixed Symbology of Nina Chanel Abney Lindsay Preston Zappas
Interview with Kulapat Yantrasast Christie Hayden
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Sandra de la Loza, Gloria Galvez, and Steve Wong
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews Raúl de Nieves
at Freedman Fitzpatrick
-Aaron Horst

Gertrud Parker
at Parker Gallery
-Ashton Cooper

Robert Yarber
at Nicodim Gallery
-Jonathan Griffin

Nikita Gale
at Commonwealth & Council
-Simone Krug

Lari Pittman
at Regen Projects
-Matt Stromberg

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Eckhaus Latta
at the Whitney Museum
of American Art
-Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 13 August 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor Julie Weitz with Angella d'Avignon
Don't Make
Everything Boring
Catherine Wagley
The Collaborative Art
World of Norm Laich
Matt Stromberg
Oddly Satisfying Art Travis Diehl
Made in L.A. 2018 Reviews Claire de Dobay Rifelj
Jennifer Remenchik
Aaron Horst
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Anna Sew Hoy, Guadalupe Rosales, and Shizu Saldamando
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews It's Snowing in LA
at AA|LA
–Matthew Lax

Fiona Conner
at the MAK Center
–Thomas Duncan

Show 2
at The Gallery @ Michael's
–Simone Krug

Deborah Roberts
at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
–Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi

Mimi Lauter
at Blum & Poe
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Math Bass
at Mary Boone
–Ashton Cooper

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Condo New York
–Laura Brown
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Issue 12 May 2018

Poetic Energies and
Radical Celebrations:
Senga Nengudi and Maren Hassinger
Simone Krug
Interior States of the Art Travis Diehl
Perennial Bloom:
Florals in Feminism
and Across L.A.
Angella d'Avignon
The Mess We're In Catherine Wagley
Interview with Christina Quarles Ashton Cooper
Object Project
Featuring Suné Woods, Michelle Dizon,
and Yong Soon Min
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Meleko Mokgosi
at The Fowler Museum at UCLA
-Jessica Simmons

Chris Kraus
at Chateau Shatto
- Aaron Horst

Ben Sanders
at Ochi Projects
- Matt Stromberg

iris yirei hsu
at the Women's Center
for Creative Work
- Hana Cohn

Harald Szeemann
at the Getty Research Institute
- Olivian Cha

Ali Prosch
at Bed and Breakfast
- Jennifer Remenchik

Reena Spaulings
at Matthew Marks
- Thomas Duncan
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Issue 11 February 2018

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Museum as Selfie Station Matt Stromberg
Accessible as Humanly as Possible Catherine Wagley
On Laura Owens on Laura Owens Travis Diehl
Interview with Puppies Puppies Jonathan Griffin
Object Project Lindsay Preston Zappas, Jeff McLane
Reviews Dulce Dientes
at Rainbow in Spanish
- Aaron Horst

Adrián Villas Rojas
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
- Lindsay Preston Zappas

Nevine Mahmoud
at M+B
- Angella D'Avignon

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960- 1985
at the Hammer Museum
- Thomas Duncan

Hannah Greely and William T. Wiley
at Parker Gallery
- Keith J. Varadi

David Hockney
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (L.A. in N.Y.)
- Ashton Cooper

Edgar Arceneaux
at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (L.A. in S.F.)
- Hana Cohn
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Issue 10 November 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Barely Living with Art:
The Labor of Domestic
Spaces in Los Angeles
Eli Diner
She Wanted Adventure:
Dwan, Butler, Mizuno, Copley
Catherine Wagley
The Languages of
All-Women Exhibitions
Lindsay Preston Zappas
L.A. Povera Travis Diehl
On Eclipses:
When Language
and Photography Fail
Jessica Simmons
Interview with
Hamza Walker
Julie Wietz
Object Project
Featuring: Rosha Yaghmai,
Dianna Molzan, and Patrick Jackson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McLane
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Reviews
Regen Projects
Ibid Gallery
One National Gay & Lesbian Archives and MOCA PDC
The Mistake Room
Luis De Jesus Gallery
the University Art Gallery at CSULB
the Autry Museum
Reviews Cheyenne Julien
at Smart Objects

Paul Mpagi Sepuya
at team bungalow

Ravi Jackson
at Richard Telles

Tactility of Line
at Elevator Mondays

Trigger: Gender as a Tool as a Weapon
at the New Museum
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 9 August 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women on the Plinth Catherine Wagley
Us & Them, Now & Then:
Reconstituting Group Material
Travis Diehl
The Offerings of EJ Hill
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
Interview with Jenni Sorkin Carmen Winant
Object Project
Featuring: Rebecca Morris,
Linda Stark, Alex Olson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McClane
Reviews Mark Bradford
at the Venice Biennale

Broken Language
at Shulamit Nazarian

Artists of Color
at the Underground Museum

Anthony Lepore & Michael Henry Hayden
at Del Vaz Projects

Home
at LACMA

Analia Saban at
Sprueth Magers
Letter to the Editor Lady Parts, Lady Arts
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Issue 8 May 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kanye Westworld Travis Diehl
@richardhawkins01 Thomas Duncan
Support Structures:
Alice Könitz and LAMOA
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Penny Slinger
Eliza Swann
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
taisha paggett
Ashley Hunt
Young Chung
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Alessandro Pessoli
at Marc Foxx

Jennie Jieun Lee
at The Pit

Trisha Baga
at 356 Mission

Jimmie Durham
at The Hammer

Parallel City
at Ms. Barbers

Jason Rhodes
at Hauser & Wirth
Letter to the Editor
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Issue 7 February 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Generous
Structures
Catherine Wagley
Put on a Happy Face:
On Dynasty Handbag
Travis Diehl
The Limits of Animality:
Simone Forti at ISCP
(L.A. in N.Y.)
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
More Wound Than Ruin:
Evaluating the
"Human Condition"
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Brenna Youngblood
Todd Gray
Rafa Esparza
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Creature
at The Broad

Sam Pulitzer & Peter Wachtler
at House of Gaga // Reena Spaulings Fine Art

Karl Haendel
at Susanne Vielmetter

Wolfgang Tillmans
at Regen Projects

Ma
at Chateau Shatto

The Rat Bastard Protective Association
at the Landing
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Issue 6 November 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kenneth Tam
's Basement
Travis Diehl
The Female
Cool School
Catherine Wagley
The Rise
of the L.A.
Art Witch
Amanda Yates Garcia
Interview with
Mernet Larsen
Julie Weitz
Agnes Martin
at LACMA
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Analia Saban
Ry Rocklen
Sarah Cain
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews
Made in L.A. 2016
at The Hammer Museum

Doug Aitken
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

Mertzbau
at Tif Sigfrids

Jean-Pascal Flavian and Mika Tajima
at Kayne Griffin Corcoran

Mark A. Rodruigez
at Park View

The Weeping Line
Organized by Alter Space
at Four Six One Nine
(S.F. in L.A.)
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Issue 5 August 2016

Letter form the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Non-Fiction
at The Underground Museum
Catherine Wagley
The Art of Birth Carmen Winant
Escape from Bunker Hill
John Knight
at REDCAT
Travis Diehl
Ed Boreal Speaks Benjamin Lord
Art Advice (from Men) Sarah Weber
Routine Pleasures
at the MAK Center
Jonathan Griffin
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Fay Ray
John Baldessari
Claire Kennedy
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Revolution in the Making
at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel

Carl Cheng
at Cherry and Martin

Joan Snyder
at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery

Elanor Antin
at Diane Rosenstein

Performing the Grid
at Ben Maltz Gallery
at Otis College of Art & Design

Laura Owens
at The Wattis Institute
(L.A. in S.F.)
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Issue 4 May 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Moon, laub, and Love Catherine Wagley
Walk Artisanal Jonathan Griffin
Reconsidering
Marva Marrow's
Inside the L.A. Artist
Anthony Pearson
Mystery Science Thater:
Diana Thater
at LACMA
Aaron Horst
Informal Feminisms Federica Bueti and Jan Verwoert
Marva Marrow Photographs
Lita Albuquerque
Interiors and Interiority:
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Char Jansen
Reviews L.A. Art Fairs

Material Art Fair, Mexico City

Rain Room
at LACMA

Evan Holloway
at David Kordansky Gallery

Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue
at The Mistake Room

Carter Mull
at fused space
(L.A. in S.F.)

Awol Erizku
at FLAG Art Foundation
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 3 February 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Le Louvre, Las Vegas Evan Moffitt
iPhones, Flesh,
and the Word:
F.B.I.
at Arturo Bandini
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women Talking About Barney Catherine Wagley
Lingua Ignota:
Faith Wilding
at The Armory Center
for the Arts
and LOUDHAILER
Benjamin Lord
A Conversation
with Amalia Ulman
Char Jansen
How We Practice Carmen Winant
Share Your Piece
of the Puzzle
Federica Bueti
Amanda Ross-Ho Photographs
Erik Frydenborg
Reviews Honeydew
at Michael Thibault

Fred Tomaselli
at California State University, Fullerton

Trisha Donnelly
at Matthew Marks Gallery

Bradford Kessler
at ASHES/ASHES
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Issue 2 November 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Hot Tears Carmen Winant
Slow View:
Molly Larkey
Anna Breininger and Kate Whitlock
Americanicity's Paintings:
Orion Martin
at Favorite Goods
Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Layers of Leimert Park Catherine Wagley
Junkspace Junk Food:
Parker Ito
at Kaldi, Smart Objects,
White Cube, and
Château Shatto
Evan Moffitt
Melrose Hustle Keith Vaughn
Max Maslansky Photographs
Monica Majoli
at the Tom of Finland Foundation
White Lee, Black Lee:
William Pope.L’s "Reenactor"
Travis Diehl
Dora Budor Interview Char Jensen
Reviews Mary Ried Kelley
at The Hammer Museum

Tongues Untied
at MOCA Pacific Design Center

No Joke
at Tanya Leighton
(L.A. in Berlin)
Snap Reviews Martin Basher at Anat Ebgi
Body Parts I-V at ASHES ASHES
Eve Fowler at Mier Gallery
Matt Siegle at Park View
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Issue 1 August 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
MEAT PHYSICS/
Metaphysical L.A.
Travis Diehl
Art for Art’s Sake:
L.A. in the 1990s
Anthony Pearson
A Dialogue in Two
Synchronous Atmospheres
Erik Morse
with Alexandra Grant
SOGTFO
at François Ghebaly
Jonathan Griffin
#studio #visit
with #devin #kenny
@barnettcohen
Mateo Tannatt
Photographs
Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Slow View:
Discussion on One Work
Anna Breininger
with Julian Rogers
Reviews Pierre Huyghe
at LACMA

Mernet Larsen
at Various Small Fires

John Currin
at Gagosian, Beverly Hills

Pat O'Niell
at Cherry and Martin

A New Rhythm
at Park View

Unwatchable Scenes and
Other Unreliable Images...
at Public Fiction

Charles Gaines
at The Hammer Museum

Henry Taylor
at Blum & Poe/ Untitled
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Abundant Frequencies:
Black Abstraction
in Motion

Leer en Español

Adee Roberson, Aquamarine (2021). Acrylic and pastel on linen, 59 x 49 x 1.5 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

Adee Roberson closed out her 40th year watching the sun dip below the ocean in Negril, Jamaica, where she returned for solace and grounding after closing distance time, an exhibition that was on view at Artist Curated Projects last summer. Jamaica is a place she always comes back to: the island is her grandmother’s place of birth, a sacred, ancestral land. 

Roberson and I met in Los Angeles in 2018 and have grown closer over the years, our connection deepening with the discovery of our mutual heritage and other intersections. Most recently, we have been spending time with each other in Jamaica, a shared point of origin. When she returned to Negril last November, I joined her on the beach and we took turns sipping mezcal on lounge chairs, lazily basking in the sun. The following week, she headed to Miami for a solo exhibition of her abstract paintings with Dominique Gallery at NADA Miami during Art Basel. Created in her studio in Los Angeles where she is based, the works featured pinks, oranges, and blues distinctly reminiscent of a Jamaica sky. The greens and blues in her abstractions reflect the mountains and oceans of the various places she has lived, synchronous hues that ground her connection to the land. For instance, Roberson has, coincidentally, lived next to a mango tree in both Lagos and Kingston. In many of her recent paintings, this memory merges with feeling and movement: layered, bulb-like shapes—rendered in various shades of green—echo the leaves of a mango tree, extending up its trunk and into the sky. Glowing yellow orbs can be found in a number of her more recent paintings, conjuring the brightness of the ripe fruit, while soft blues and purples mark the sky at different moments—an abstract timeline. 

In Roberson’s paintings, there is seldom reference to anything recognizable outside of what may loosely resemble a gateway (a door, a window). When an overt figure is present, such as in Aquamarine (2021)—which includes a small, cutout image of Patra, a Jamaican dancehall artist, in the top left corner—it is usually a portrait of a personally significant figure or a family member. This aspect of her practice is meaningful in that the particularity of the reproduction of these images counteracts abstraction’s open-endedness; the figures become keys to unlocking Roberson’s thematic pathways. The abstract painted works are made up of bright colors and shapes that weave together with bold chromatic contrast. The color palette is vibrant, stark, emphatic, and unreserved. The shapes are organic—a mix of hard edges and gentle curves create portals and passageways into complex realms. Abstraction is used as a device to transmute her experiences and identity into a nonlinear form of storytelling that results in an archive of her movement across borders. The paintings are a testimony, an archival practice imbued with spirituality and legacy. 

Historically, abstraction has been a difficult area for Black artists to find success in, as abstraction upends projected ideas of what visualized Blackness is often told to be. However, in Stuart Hall’s essay, “New ethnicities,” he speaks to a developing consciousness in Black cultural politics that moves away from an understanding of the struggle of “black experience” as a singular, hegemonic racial identity, and toward “the recognition of the extraordinary diversity of subjective positions, social experiences and cultural identities which compose the category ‘black.’”1 The growing embrace of abstract work by Afro-diasporic artists speaks to this evolution of critical consciousness, reflecting self-determination, optimism, and freedom, and dispelling the myth of a unified experience. Though, in the past, Black people may have been limited to working in ways describable, transparent, and decipherable to secure the reception of their art, abstraction unlocks an escape. As Adrienne Edwards points out, “[b]lackness in abstraction… shifts analysis away from the black artist as subject and instead emphasizes blackness as material, method and mode, insisting on blackness as a multiplicity.”2 Through abstraction, artists can embrace the fullness of self as a subject, decisively moving away from objecthood. Non-representation allows for boundless exploration, capturing the essence of plurality; a notion heightened when one travels, as Roberson does, through various geographies, creating a mutable, networked understanding of self. 

Adee Roberson, Coastal Echoes (2021). Acrylic on linen, 108 x 72 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Artist Curated Projects.

Roberson’s work is a progeny of this broadened viewpoint, embracing a multifaceted exploration of identity. Born in West Palm Beach to an Afro-Jamaican mother, she has always been deeply connected to her diasporic roots. She embraces the cross sections between the matriarchal Jamaican home traditions espoused by her mother, aunts, and grandmother; African American pop culture; and West African spiritual teachings. An expression of such intersectional reflection requires the adaptability abstraction allows—a practice where forms can reshape, invent, and reflect a dynamic internal world that is not hemmed in by direct representation. The process of becoming pairs well with abstraction’s limitless possibilities. 

Predecessors within the field of Black abstraction have similarly demonstrated its expansiveness: Mavis Pusey, who was born in Retreat, Jamaica, in 1928 and moved to New York City as a young adult, turned to abstraction as an expression of her life in motion. As she developed her practice in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, moving between New York, London, and Paris, she engaged with the urban landscapes as the skylines evolved and grew. In Puriv (c. 1968), hard-edged, muted shapes and lines loosely convey the building materials, streets, and fire escapes that make up urban life. Dynamic angles capture the transience of cityscapes. In reflecting on her work, she once commented, “I see the new [city] construction as a rebirth, a catalyst for a new environment, and since the past must be a link to the future, in each of my works…. there is a circle to depict the never-ending continuation of natural order and all matter.”3 This cyclical notion of time, growth, and movement—conveyed in her paintings via changing cityscapes and seasons—mirrored her own migration as a Jamaican through the various places and cultures she inhabited.

Born in St. James and currently based in Chicago, Jamaican artist Leasho Johnson follows Pusey’s legacy, using abstraction as a means to unpack a complex identity while moving through different cities—his works liberated from fixed and static representation. In Rules for being free (Anansi #6) (2020), part of an ongoing series, a faint silhouette or shadow can be seen within a lush, green terrain. Bright strokes of green and yellow interrupt areas of darkness to create an immersive feeling, the lurking unknown in the just beyond. What appears to be a loosely-rendered leg pierces the air above as an amorphous shape in the foreground begins to register as a suggestion of bodies moving together. In contemplation of a queer, Black body in motion, Johnson’s dark figures teeter with abstraction—envisioned in black with vague, brown outlines and emphasized with strokes of red-orange, their fluid shapes melt into a larger landscape with sensual movement. He uses a chorus of materials—charcoal, distemper, watercolor, ink, acrylic, gold foil, oil, oil stick, and gesso—to create a stunning work in which identity, lineage, and relocation collapse into one space as another type of malleable multiplicity. Johnson’s vibrant abstract visualizations give us hope for continued survival; one queer Black person painting another, remembering another.

Roberson, Pusey, and Johnson have traveled similar routes from Jamaica to the United States with significant stops across international art centers, their works connected by an occasionally shared color palette and by a shared sense of geographic movement, wherein their Jamaican identities have also been forced to shift and evolve. Each found abstraction as a means of navigating the distance between themselves and their changing environments.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, painter June Edmonds often experiences her abstraction as communications from the ancestors, illuminating future possibilities anchored in previous migration. Joy of Other Suns (2021) features muted and dark colors (shades of plum, olive, deep berry, crimson, mustard) painted in sweeping arcs—the occasional periwinkle or blush imbue a tenderness or even a vulnerability that contrasts with the work’s overall somber tones. The almond shapes created at the intersection of Edmonds’ bold strokes are charged with a sense of transport, creating energetic gateways through which she might forge connection to her African American ancestors.

During a hurricane in Kingston last summer, Roberson recorded music using a synthesizer and a kalimba, an instrument with African origins. She understands one of her roles to be memory keeper, and her practice is a means of resisting the dilution of time. The rain pattered urgently on the roof, wind whipping through the trees and electronic notes, the cosmic and airy sounds of the inherited instrument combining in an organic, magical soundscape. Roberson’s abstract practice similarly speaks to a mysticism found in weaving together her diverse lineage. 

Via the boundarilessness of abstraction, the smells of her grandmothers and aunts cooking together in a South Florida kitchen might swirl together with the music she performed while in Lagos, colliding to create a kaleidoscopic future that holds stories of the past for safekeeping. Abstraction reflects an intuitive dialogue between the Black artist and the world—one where they are free to work outside of the confines of a prescribed identity.

This essay was originally published in Carla issue 27

June Edmonds, Joy of Other Suns (2021). Acrylic on canvas, 88 x 128 inches. © June Edmonds. Image courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

Leasho Johnson, Rules for being free (Anansi #6) (2020). Charcoal, distemper, watercolor, ink, acrylic, gold foil, oil, oil stick, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 52 x 68 x 1.75 inches. © Leasho Johnson. Image courtesy of the artist and FLXST Contemporary, Chicago.

  1. Stuart Hall, “New ethnicities,” Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, 1996. New York: Routledge. 441–449. https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/88663/original/Hall%2B-%2BNew%2BEthnicities.pdf.
  2. Adrienne Edwards, “Blackness in Abstraction,” Art in America, January 5, 2015, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/blackness-in-abstraction-3-63053/.
  3. Mavis Pusey, source unknown, quoted in Hallie Ringle, “Remembering Mavis Pusey,” The Studio Museum in Harlem, https://www.studiomuseum.org/article/remembering-mavis-pusey. Accessed January 10, 2022.

Nneka Jackson is a writer, creative professional, and creator and editor-in-chief of Eek! A Vagina, a zine that platforms censor-free expression of queer and trans people of color. Currently, her writing practice involves poetry and essays, with published work across several different platforms including gal-dem and NIKE ACG. She is based between Kingston, Jamaica, and Los Angeles.

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