Tomashi Jackson (born 1980) is an American

multimedia artist Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditio ...

working across

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

textiles Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

and

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

. Jackson was born in

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

, raised in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, and currently lives and works in

New York, NY New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

Cambridge, MA Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

. Jackson was named a 2019

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

participating artist. Jackson also serves on the faculty for sculpture at

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

. Her work is included in the collection of MOCA Los Angeles. In 2004, a 20-foot-high by 80-foot-long mural by Jackson entitled ''Evolution of a Community'' was unveiled in the Los Angeles neighborhood of West Adams.

Artistic practice

Jackson's work investigates the relationships between the aesthetic and the political. Jackson references layered content bridging historical actions with shifting artistic structures. Her multimedia practice draws from

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, ...

' research on color relativity, "resulting in works with exuberant color, bold geometry, and intricate layerings of material." Jackson first became interested in Albers' work while studying painting and printmaking at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. At the time she noted that the language Albers used to describe color perception phenomenon mirrored the language around racial segregation found in education policy and the transcripts of civil rights court cases fought by

Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...

and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. This analysis led Jackson to use

color theory In the visual arts, color theory is the body of practical guidance for color mixing and the visual effects of a specific color combination. Color terminology based on the color wheel and its geometry separates colors into primary color, seconda ...

as an aesthetic strategy to investigate and connect past and present. "Color theory and human rights are conceptually interwoven in my paintings," said the artist. "I find the language comparisons appropriate metaphors for a critique of racism rather than a critique of categories of race." Incorporating images painted from photographs and other materials chosen for their formal qualities, Jackson's work "bridges gaps between geometric experimentation and the systematization of injustice." Jackson is interested in movement and migration, in particular how these activities are curtailed for populations of color. Her project at the 2019 Whitney Biennial compared people of color losing their homes in the 19th century, when Seneca Village was razed to become part of Central Park, with homeowners in Brooklyn recently losing their homes under a controversial policy known as third-party transfer. She was included in the 2019 traveling exhibition ''Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art''.

Education

Jackson received her BFA from

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

in 2010, MS from the

MIT School of Architecture and Planning The MIT School of Architecture and Planning (MIT SAP, stylized as SA+P) is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1865 by William Robert Ware, the school offered the f ...

in 2012, and MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the

Yale School of Art The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...

in 2016.

Teaching

She has lectured and taught at

Massachusetts College of Art and Design Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation’s oldest art schools, the only publicly funded independent art school ...

UMass Dartmouth The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMass Dartmouth or UMassD) is a public research university in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It is the southernmost campus of the University of Massachusetts system. Formerly Southeastern Massachusetts Un ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

, and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Curatorial work

Jackson's curatorial work includes Publication-Schmublication at The Broadway Gallery, New York (December 2008), Drawing Atmosphere at Super Front Architectural Exhibition Space, New York (March 2008) Fever Grass: A Brief Study of Collective Memory and Waste Management in Dangriga, BZ. at

The Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

, New York (November 2008), and Everything There and Not There at The Broadway Gallery, New York (August 2008).

Exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions

* 2014 - ''Love Economy: Emerging Visions of the African American Experience'', Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI * 2016 - ''The Subliminal Is Now'', Tilton Gallery, New York, NY * 2018 - ''Interstate Love Song'', Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA * 2019 - ''Time Out of Mind'', Tilton Gallery, New York, NY * 2020 - ''Forever My Lady'', Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA * 2020 – ''Love Rollercoaster'', The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH * 2022 – ''SLOW JAMZ'', Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY * 2024 - ''Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe'', Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA *TBA - Platform: Tomashi Jackson, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY

Selected group exhibitions

* 2012 - ''Brucennial,''

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

* 2016 - ''Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter,''

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sc ...

* 2017 - ''In the Abstract'',

Mass MoCA The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing ar ...

* 2019 -

, curated by

Rujeko Hockley Rujeko Hockley (born in Zimbabwe) is a New York-based US curator. Hockley is currently an Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Life and education Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, Hockley relocated to Washington, D.C. with her famil ...

and

Jane Panetta Jane Panetta is a New York-based curator and art historian. Panetta is currently an Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Career Curating Before working at the Whitney, Panetta spent five years in the Painting and Sculpture Dep ...

*2020 - ''Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City Through Mutated Lenses'',

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948, dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public. As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visual ...

* Her work has been included in the 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 ''

Art Basel Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...

Miami Beach'' as well.

Publications

* ''The seen, the unseen, and the aesthetics of infrastructure.'' S.M. in Art, Culture, and Technology; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture 2012 * ''Tomashi Jackson: Interstate Love Song, Jan. 27-May 6, 2018.'' Kennesaw, GA: Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, 2018. * ''Whitney Biennial 2019: exhibition, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, May 17-September 22, 2019.'' New York, NY: Whitney Museum of American Art. copyright 2019 * ''Hinge Pictures: Eight Women Artists Occupy the Third Dimension'', Catskill, New York: Siglio Press; New Orleans, LA: Contemporary Arts Center, 2019.

References

External links

The Linguistic Overlap of Color Theory and Racism - HyperallergicRhythm and Blues: Tomashi Jackson by Cora Fisher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, Tomashi 1980 births Living people 21st-century American painters African-American painters Yale School of Art alumni MIT School of Architecture and Planning alumni Cooper Union alumni 20th-century American painters 21st-century American women artists African-American women artists Artists from Houston