Tomashi Jackson, Blessed Be the Rock (1920s Dearfield Group, 1970s Ruth Flowers in The Little Rectangle, & the 1972 Second Baptist Church Choir), 2023, acrylic, Yule Quarry marble dust, and Red Rocks soil on paper bags, canvas, and textile with PVC marine vinyl, brass hooks and grommets on a handcrafted wood awning structure, 86 x 84 x 8 inches (218.4 x 213.4 x 20.3 cm)
ARTFORUM
CRITICS' PICK
Tomashi Jackson
Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA
July 30 - December 8, 2024
By Helen Miller
September 16, 2024
Filmmakers are primed for unscripted material to leap into frame, heightening awareness. They refer to it as “the real,” and it appears everywhere in Tomashi Jackson’s mid-career survey, “Across the Universe.” Covering several bodies of work in various media made between 2014 and 2023, the show demonstrates the role of lived experience and improvisation in Jackson’s consciousness-raising oeuvre.
The storefront awning that comprises Interstate Love Song (Friends of Clayton County Transit) (Pitts Road Station Opposition), 2018, is draped with archival images of civil rights rallies printed on Mylar. Adapted for the wall, the structure supports the painterly collage Blessed Be the Rock (1920s Dearfield Group, 1970s Ruth Flowers in The Little Rectangle, & the 1972 Second Baptist Church Choir), 2023. The work is based on Jackson’s research into Colorado towns where Black communities thrived and features the titular sites, virtuosically rendered in halftone lines of sand and acrylic.
For One Night Only with Tommy Tonight, 2023, the artist’s pop-star persona lip-syncs a Doobie Brothers album while leading a tour of her bold new work at Night Gallery in Los Angeles. Recordings of conversations with her mother about domestic labor interrupt and recast Jackson’s performance as a vehicle for the suffering of generations of caregivers.
There’s a moment in the video Vibrating Boundaries (Law of the Land) (Self Portrait as Tatyana, Dajerria, & Sandra), 1963–2015, 2016, when Naiymah Jackson, the artist’s friend, finishes reciting from Josef Albers’ 1963 book Interaction of Color. Behind the camera, the artist suggests she resume reading, but something of her own choosing.
The woman, flanked by her pre-teen children, selects the chapter “On teaching color—some color terms,” and reads against a chroma-keyed video documenting police brutality. The pixelated footage fills the screen. Throughout this stellar presentation are many instances of “the real”—moments of accidental darkness and beauty that force the artist, and us, into someplace profound.