Clouds of joy

Clouds of Joy, 2021, is part of an ongoing project titled Freedom Songs, which recalls civil rights era protest songs in the African American music tradition– from spirituals, gospel, and R&B. The piece was included in the group exhibition, Otherwise/Revival, which took place at Bridge Projects in Los Angeles in 2021. The exhibition visualized the impact of the historic Black church—specifically the Black Pentecostal movement—on contemporary artists. Curated by Jasmine McNeal and Cara Megan Lewis, the curatorial concept and show’s title centers on Ashton T. Crawley’s concept of “otherwise possibilities.” For Crawley, the elements of the Black Pentecostal Church—the Hammond organ, emphatic breath, shouting, and glossolalia—create space for “otherwise possibility” to emerge. The works in the exhibition respond to these “otherwise possibilities” embodied by the Black church. The exhibition opened in person and virtually in April 2021 with an extensive list of programming including a day-long open house, online musical performances, and lectures.

Clouds of Joy also featured in the group exhibition Resting Our Eyes at the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Francisco in 2022. Curated by Tahirah Rasheed and Autumn Breon, the show brought together new and existing works from 20 multi-generational Black artists working across sculpture, photography, video, mixed media, painting, and textile. Centering Black female rest, leisure, and adornment as radical mechanisms for liberation, the show invited audience members to see Black women as fully realized and free.

Exhibitions:
Resting Our Eyes, ICA+SF, San Francisco, CA. | Curators: Tahirah Rasheed; Autumn Breon
Otherwise/Revival, Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, CA. | Exhibition Catalog | Curators: Cara Lewis; Jasmine McNeal