Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe

A summation of the work by Tomashi Jackson (b.1980) on show in her solo exhibition Across the Universe FIG.1 is near impossible, given the maximal abundance of both its material explorations and incorporated imagery.¹ Colour is a first impression: it beckons and seduces. But colour is a second-order message as well, evident in the theme of race relations that runs throughout the works. With an exuberance that might be described as cheerful – were her subject-matter less fraught – Jackson brings together wide-ranging references to histories of inequality and racism. These collide and collapse in palimpsests of found images, rendered with varying degrees of legibility, within compositions that veer towards abstraction. Their material identity is equally complex, with pieces that can loosely be described as paintings spilling out into sculptural dimensions. Interconnected ideas are likewise explored in photographs and video.

A key moment in Jackson’s melding of different modalities came while she was pursuing an MFA in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art, New Haven, in 2015–16. While simultaneously reading a history of Thurgood Marshall’s United States Supreme Court victory in the landmark desegregation case Brown v Board of Education (1954) and Josef Albers’s Interaction of Colour (1964), she was struck by their shared focus on how colour is constituted through a series of dynamic relationships. In an interview not long after, Jackson elaborated:

The language around de jure segregation is similar to Albers’s description of the wrong way to perceive color, as if color is static. Marshall and Albers concluded that color is relative, and what a viewer perceives a color to be is determined by the color nearest to it.²

A sequence of three works FIG.2 in the opening gallery of Across the Universe announces Jackson’s multifaceted approach. As in much of the artist’s practice, the title Dajerria All Alone (Bolling v. Sharpe (District of Columbia)) (McKinney Pool Party) (2016), indicates, at least to some extent, the work’s intertwined references. One is a 1954 Supreme Court ruling specific to the District of Columbia that mirrored Brown v Board of Education in finding school segregation by race unconstitutional. The other parts of the title draw attention to an act of excessive force from 2015, when Eric Casebolt, a Texas police officer, responded to complaints regarding a pool party attended by African American teenagers. Casebolt was filmed as he threw Dajerria Becton, then fifteen and wearing only a swimsuit, to the ground and pointed his gun at the other unarmed teens.

While the array of colours in the work initially draws the eye, the multiple photographic transfers and silkscreen prints are crucial components within its heavily layered surface, including Dajerria’s face and 1950s-era schoolchildren. Additional images appear on the pillow-like forms sewn to the bottom of the canvas. There is also a more subtle connection to Texas through the incorporation of brown soil from Project Row Houses, Houston, where Jackson shot footage for a related video.³

Further along the wall, Color Study in 3 Reds, 2 Blacks, 2 Greens (2016) consists of a tubular knitted form suspended in a shadow-box frame. There are indeed three different hues of red yarn and two greens, but one of the blacks is in fact a band of brown. This apparent mismatch between title and object emphasises distinctions between the sharply polarised language of racial difference and nuances of skin tone. A photograph installed between these two works, Dajerria All Alone (Eric N. Mack) (2016), which shows the artist Eric N. Mack (b.1987) wearing the same knitted object, brings home the point about multiple lived experiences of colour.

The trajectory of the exhibition provides further instances of the complex interplay between Jackson’s engagement with various locales, her exploration of materials and the associations prompted by reading and research. Still Remains FIG.3, originally created for an exhibition at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, reflects the artist’s interest in how legislation and public transportation policy in Atlanta have historically reinforced separations between Black and white populations in the downtown area and the city’s suburbs. Viewed in this light, the work’s abstract geometry of concentric linear elements evokes barriers associated with a lack of transport connecting the urban centre and its peripheries. The loops around the edges turn out to be handles from paper bags that have been collaged together, along with campaign flyers encouraging voter participation, to form the work’s surface.

During a 2019 residency in Athens, Jackson delved into disparities between democratic ideals in Classical Greece and the suppression of Black voting rights in the United States. A Pnyx for Crystal Mason in Fort Worth, TX FIG.4 takes the beginning of its title from the name of the hill in Athens where, from the fifth century BCE, its citizens gathered for assemblies; the second part calls attention to a five-year prison sentence handed down to Crystal Mason for illegal voting. Mason was charged and convicted following an attempt to cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election without realising that she was ineligible because of a previous felony. Two semi-transparent vinyl strips that extend vertically over an enlarged halftone image of Mason’s face connect the recent incident to photographs of violent responses to civil rights era voter registration initiatives in Alabama and Georgia in 1961–62.

The wider political backdrop to Mason’s lengthy prison sentence involved a surge of unsubstantiated Republican claims regarding voter fraud during Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign. In March 2024, following a series of appeals, Mason’s conviction was overturned due to a lack of proof that she was aware of her ineligibility to vote. The persecution might not be over, however, as the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has announced that it will re-examine the decision to acquit Mason. Indeed, the outcome of the 2024 presidential election is certain to embolden further disenfranchisement initiatives. 

Some of Jackson’s recent work explores moments of progress in the 1960s that contrast sharply with forces being unleashed in the present. One of the darkest pieces in the exhibition, with respect to pigment, is also, paradoxically, one of the more optimistic. The work’s title, Across the Universe (Frontlash) FIG.5 is taken from the 1969 Beatles song, but the most significant musical allusion appears in an enlarged image of the enthusiastic audience response to Nina Simone’s performance of ‘To Be Young, Gifted, and Black’ at Morehouse College, Atlanta, in 1969.

Part of Jackson’s Great Society (2022) series FIG.6, the work builds on earlier formal and conceptual strategies. In this piece, the marble dust is not from Greece, but from a quarry in Colorado that supplied marble for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Paper bag handles appear to anchor the surface to its support, affixed as part of a system of grommets and hooks to wooden forms inspired by awning structures. The vinyl overlay also returns, this time in orange and printed with a photograph of the crowd at a 1964 speech delivered at the University of Michigan by President Lyndon B. Johnson, in which he outlined his vision for a future characterised by an ‘abundance and liberty for all’ and ‘an end to poverty and racial injustice’. Given recent political developments in the United States, this reminder of a period in which progressive ideals were transformed into official policy only increases the urgency of Jackson’s work.