Resting our Eyes
Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco | San Francisco, CA
January 21 - June 5, 2023

Clouds of Joy (2021) was included in ICA SF's Resting Our Eyes, curated by Tahirah Rasheed and Autumn Breon.

Focusing on the liberation and celebration of Black women through the lens of leisure and physical adornment, Resting Our Eyes features new and existing works from 20 multi-generational Black artists working across sculpture, photography, video, mixed media, painting, and textile. Through embodied experiences of space and temporality, and spectrums of abstraction and representation, these artists contend with the limitations and failures of the colonial gaze by casting Black womxn at the center of their visions. Collectively, these works invite us to see Black womxn as fully realized and free.

– Curatorial statement

2022 FotoFocus Biennial: World Record
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center | Cincinnati, OH
September 30, 2022 - March 6, 2023

Harriet Tubman, (2020) was included in ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory. The exhibition considered the historic and contemporary role photography and film have played in remembering legacies of slavery and its aftermath and examined the social lives of Black and white Americans within the context of the land, at home, photographic albums, at historic sites and in public memory. The show was curated by Deborah Willis, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, and Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History at Cornell University.

Purchase the exhibition catalogue here: Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory.

Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves
Contemporary Jewish Museum | San Francisco, CA
February 17, 2022 - January 8, 2023

A new commissioned work, Gilded Fracture, (2022), was included in Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves, a group exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Presenting works by over twenty-five Bay Area contemporary artists, the exhibition reflects on the Jewish concept of tikkun (Hebrew for “to repair”), re-examining the term as a phenomenon of care and interconnectedness that is grounded in personal action, environmental responsibility, and community.

Lava Thomas: Homecoming
Spelman College Museum of Fine Art | Atlanta, GA 30314
August 17 - December 3, 2022

Lava Thomas: Homecoming was on view at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Homecoming was brought to Spelman by guest curator Bridget Cooks, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History and African American Studies at UC Irvine, and Liz Andrews, Ph.D., Executive Director of Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.

The exhibition included three bodies of work. Mugshot Portraits is an opportunity to see the women who led and participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott revered in a place of honor instead of within the justice system that criminalized their stand for equality. Looking Back and Seeing Now and Decatur are based on Thomas’s exploration of her family’s archival materials. Like the Mugshot Portraits, these works visualize the importance of photography, portraiture, and history, further demonstrating her commitment to making the past part of the present.

View the exhibition catalogue here: Lava Thomas: Homecoming

Lava Thomas: Homecoming
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts | Montgomery, AL
April 30 - July 24, 2022

Lava Thomas: Homecoming brought together, for the first time, all fourteen drawings of the series Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (2018–2021); the multimedia installation Looking Back and Seeing Now (2015); and The Decatur Project (2021), a new set of drawings that debuted at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in April of 2022. The exhibition was organized by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, with guest curator Bridget Cooks, PhD, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Art History, University of California, Irvine.

The Artist’s Eye
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) | Berkeley, CA
March 19–July 17, 2022

The Artist's Eye brought together Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman, John Zurier, and Lava Thomas to illuminate new dimensions of the museum’s 28,000-work collection. Each artist curating the show was represented in BAMPFA’s collection and had been featured in exhibitions at the museum. Thomas’s presentation addressed BAMPFA’s relationship with Black artists, and women in particular, highlighting work made by Black female artists—including Erica Deeman, Betye Saar, and Carrie Mae Weems—that takes the experience of Black womanhood as its subject.

Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of The Paulson Fontaine Press
Mills College Art Museum | Oakland, CA

Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of The Paulson Fontaine Press at Mills College Art Museum included work by Edgar Arceneaux, Radcliffe Bailey, McArthur Binion, Gee’s Bend Quilters (Louisiana Bendolph, Mary Lee Bendolph, Loretta Bennett, Loretta Pettway), Lonnie Holley, David Huffman, Samuel Levi Jones, Kerry James Marshall, Martin Puryear, Gary Simmons and Lava Thomas.

A Change is Gonna Come, Oh Yes it Will (2018), takes its title from the song by Sam Cooke written in 1964, and is part of an ongoing project that recalls civil rights era protest songs in the African American music tradition; from spirituals, gospel and R&B. Freedom songs were sung to inspire courage during meetings, marches, and when activists were arrested during actions of protest against Jim Crow subjugation and terrorism.

Traveling Exhibition: The Black Index

Three portraits from Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott were featured in The Black Index. The traveling show was curated by Bridget R. Cooks, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art History, University of California, Irvine. Mugshot Portraits takes a contemporary look back at a powerful, yet under-acknowledged legacy of Black women’s activism through graphite and conté pencil portraits based on mugshots of women who were indicted under Alabama’s anti-boycott laws. While mugshots aim to dehumanize and criminalize, the life-sized, highly-detailed portraits offer a counter narrative, illuminating the leadership and sustained labor of women to the boycott’s success. The traveling exhibition explored the possibilities of portraiture as an alternative to images of Black subjugation instituted by colonialist visuals. The show aimed to challenge assumptions about Black representation and provided imaginative approaches to critiquing and complicating the ways that the Black figure is rendered and remembered.

Watch the discussion here, between artists Whitfield Lovell, Lava Thomas, Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley Leigh Raiford, PhD, and and LeRonn Brooks, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Collections, The Getty Research Institute LeRonn.

View the catalog, featuring the work of Dennis Delgado, Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas.

Venues
UC Irvine University Art Gallery | Irvine, CA
Jan 14 - Mar 20, 2021

Palo Alto Arts Center | Palo Alto, CA
May 1 - August 14, 2021

Art Galleries at Black Studies — University of Texas at Austin | Austin, TX
September 16 - December 12, 2021

Hunter College Art Galleries | New York, NY
February 1 - April 3, 2022

New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) | Berkeley, CA
August 28, 2021 - January 30, 2022

Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Jimmie L. Lowe) (2018)—part of the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) permanent collection—was included in New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, a major survey exploring recent feminist practices in contemporary art.

The exhibition took Lucy Lippard's 1980 statement that feminist art is “neither a style nor a movement” but rather “a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life” as a point of departure, examining the values, strategies, and ways of life reflected in current feminist art. It featured more than 150 works by 77 artists and collectives, and was organized around eight themes: hysteria; the gaze; revisiting historical subjects through a feminist lens; the fragmented female body; gender fluidity; labor, domesticity, and activism; female anger; and feminist utopias.

Traveling Exhibition: The Outwin: American Portraiture Today

Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Lottie Green Varner) from the collection of David and Pamela Hornik, was included in The Outwin: American Portraiture Today organized by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Venues
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum | St. Louis, MO
September 10, 2021 - January 23, 2022

Springfield Museum | Springfield, MA
October 3, 2020 – May 9, 2021

Next To You
McEvoy Foundation For The Arts | San Francisco, CA

Illuminated Anthem (2018) was included in Next To You at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts—is a tribute to Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, a hymn that was written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson. Recalling the memories of singing this song in her childhood community, the metallic surfaces underscore the idea of illumination, noting the significance of the song for Thomas, the Black Community, and to American history. The mirrored surfaces allow for reflection, both symbolically and literally: viewers see themselves reflected in the work and become part of a larger ‘community’ as they read the songs lyrics.

The 2021 exhibition—drawn primarily from the McEvoy Family Collection—showcased modern and contemporary works that relate to song, dance, theatre, music, circus arts, film, and other art forms.

Traveling Exhibition: Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press

Fictitious Self Portrait, (2006) was included in Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press. The show covered a wide range of prints, paintings, quilts, and sculptures, and included an array of abstract and formal imagery, with narratives that spoke to personal experiences and political perspectives woven throughout. Artists included in the exhibition helped to shape the contemporary art conversation in the Bay Area and beyond. Featured artists: Edgar Arceneaux, Radcliffe Bailey, McArthur Binion, Gee's Bend Quilters (Louisiana Bendolph, Mary Lee Bendolph, Loretta Bennett, Loretta Pettway), Lonnie Holley, David Huffman, Samuel Levi Jones, Kerry James Marshall, Martin Puryear, Gary Simmons, and Lava Thomas.

View a video tour of the traveling exhibition here.

Venues
DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University | Marquette, MI 
August 16 - October 31, 2021

Mills College Art Museum | Oakland, CA
On view: January 18 - March 12, 2022

Bakersfield Museum of Art | Bakersfield, CA
On view: April 28 - August 20, 2022

Requiem for Charleston
Smithsonian American Art Museum | Washington, DC

Requiem for Charleston (2016)—in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum—considers the events of June 17, 2015, when nine men and women were shot by a white supremacist inside one of the country’s oldest historically Black churches in Charleston, South Carolina. The installation (previously on view at the museum) consisted of 25 tambourines whose drums have been replaced with black lambskin, referring to the quintessential symbol of innocence and sacrifice. Nine of the tambourines are inscribed with the names of the murdered men and woman; others are left blank in tribute to the many men, women, and children who have died in attacks on Black churches.

Watch the SAAM “Meet The Artist” here, where Thomas discusses Requiem for Charleston.

Watch the panel discussion here, with with artists Alfredo Jaar, Sam Giliiam, E. Carmen Ramos and Lava Thomas.

Otherwise/Revival
Bridge Projects Gallery | Los Angeles, CA
April 9 - July 31, 2021

Clouds of Joy (2021) was on view in Otherwise/Revival—curated by Jasmine McNeal and Cara Megan Lewis, exploring the Black church as a point of inspiration, and the infinite possibilities that arise with the connection of creativity and community—at Bridge Projects in Los Angeles. The work assembles tambourines—an egalitarian instrument whose history is rooted in cultures around the globe, and a beloved artifact from Lava Thomas’s childhood experiences growing up in the Black Pentecostal Church—into cloud-like forms of musical notes of symphonic arrangements, referencing gospel music and freedom songs.

The exhibition featured work by Terry Adkins, McArthur Binion, Angela Bryant, Willie Cole, Ashon T. Crawley, Kenturah Davis, Mark Steven Greenfield, Lauren Halsey, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Letitia Huckaby, Sedrick Huckaby, Clementine Hunter, VinZula Kara, Caroline Kent, Deana Lawson, Nery Gabriel Lemus, Christina McPhee, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Dario Robleto, Lezley Saar, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Phyllis Stephens, blkHaUS Studios, Lava Thomas, Sara Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin, Genesis Tramaine, Kehinde Wiley, Brittney Leeanne Williams, and Nate Young.

Watch the virtual walk-through of the exhibition here, with insights from the curators about Pentecostal church history, the perseverance of Black artists, joy as resistance, and more.

View the exhibition catalogue here: Otherwise/Revival

When Nobody's Watching
Rena Bransten Gallery | San Francisco, CA
May 22 - July 10, 2021

Black + White = Yellow was included in the group exhibition, When Nobody’s Watching at Rena Bransten Gallery in 2021. Paying homage to the time-honored tradition of self-portraiture, this collection of works demonstrated a multiplicity of approaches to the genre—sometimes confessional and profound, sometimes self-deprecating and humorous. The exhibition featured artists Faisal Abdu’Allah, John Bankston, Phoebe Beasley, Jonathan Calm, Gina Contreras, Tracey Emin, Rodney Ewing, Viola Frey, Rupert Garcia, Joseph Green, Doug Hall, Bovey Lee, David Linger, Hung Liu, Chip Lord, Vik Muniz, Tameka Jenean Norris Estate, Sidney Russell, Ron Moultrie Saunders, Kathy Sloane, Lava Thomas, Tara Tucker, John Waters, Lewis Watts, and Derek Weisberg. View the virtual exhibition here.

Sound Vision: Harmonious Relationships in Art and Music
Virtually via Lehman College Art Gallery | Bronx, NY
December 2020 - June 2021

Lehman College Art Gallery's first virtual gallery, Sound Vision: Harmonious Relationships in Art and Music, featured artists that transform music into artistic visual manifestations and highlighted the ways in which the presence of both the auditory and the visual contribute to a rich sensory experience. Co-curated by Independent Curator, Alva Greenberg and Lehman College Art Gallery Executive Director, Bartholomew F. Bland, this exhibition showcased three dozen artists and over 60 artworks that all use music and sound as a point of inspiration. Artists include Derrick Adams, Terry Adkins, Suzanne Bocanegra, Arthur Ganson, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Robert Kushner, Whitfield Lovell, Jason Moran, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Lava Thomas, Paul Villinski, Michael Kelly Williams, and more.

Deeds Not Words: Women Working for Change 
Sun Valley Museum of Art | Ketchum, ID
January 8 - April 16, 2021

Celebrating the rich and often under-appreciated roles that women play in the struggle for gender and racial equity, Deeds Not Words highlighted a far reaching lineage of women’s work for social justice. Encompassing suffrage, dress reform, civil rights, and economic equality, the show includes work by  Alice Constance Austin, Pat Boas, Elena del Rivero, Angela Ellsworth, and Lava Thomas. This inspired pairing of artistic expression honors women and illuminates the necessity of acknowledging not only their voices, but their actions as well. 

Justice
Marin Museum of Modern Art | Novato, CA
November 14 - December 24, 2020

Justice featured 40 artworks in a wide variety of media working within themes of racial injustice and resistance. Curated by Karen Jenkins-Johnson of Jenkins-Johnson Gallery, the exhibition drew from noteworthy African American artists in the Bay Area with international audiences, highlighting historical and contemporary moments of racial reckoning. Artists included Wesaam Al-Badry, Nyame Brown, Dewey Crumpler, Erica Deeman, Rodney Ewing, Mildred Howard, Lava Thomas, Lewis Watts, and more. Watch the artist talks here.

Monument
Virtually via. Minnesota Street Project | San Francisco, CA

Inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Monument”, this exhibition painted an evocative and metaphorical message about memorial structures. Artists visually explored ideas about remembrance, history and embodiment. Artists featured: Zarhouie Abdalian, Wesaam Al-Badry, Judd Bergeron, Dawoud Bey, Sandow Birk, T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, Jacob Hashimoto, Mildred Howard, Bovey Lee, Daniel Li, Nick Makanna, Alicia McCarthy, John Patrick McKenzie, James Miles, Aida Muluneh, Vik Muniz, Gay Outlaw, Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, Roland Record, Evelyn Reyes, James Shefik, Hung Kei Shu, Lava Thomas, and Zio Ziegler. Learn more and view virtual exhibition here.

181 Fremont: Podium
181 Fremont Art Program | San Francisco, CA
August 12 – September 15, 2020

At the crossroads of Art and Design, 181 Fremont featured Podium, an exhibition of contemporary art by 15 Black artists: Serge Clottey, Erica Deeman, Leonardo Drew, Theaster Gates, Angela Hennessy, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Isaac Julien, Shaina McCoy, Simphiwe Ndzube, Angelina Pwerle, Chanell Stone, Tavares Strachan, Moffat Takadiwan, Woody de Othello and Lava Thomas. Curated by art advisor Holly Baxter, the art was integrated into beautifully appointed residential spaces by interior designer Robbie McMillan of Aubrey Maxwell.

Surfacing Histories Sculpting Memories
Presented by the San Francisco Advocacy for the National Museum of Women in the Arts
CCA Hubbell Street Galleries | San Francisco, CA
September 3 - October 4, 2019

Held in conjunction with the National Museum of Women in the Arts 2020 Women to Watch exhibition series, Surfacing Histories Sculpting Memories featured work by five Bay Area artists working with paper including Sofía Córdova (MFA, 2010), Julia Goodman (MFA, 2009), Sandra Ono, Amy Tavern (MFA, 2017), and Lava Thomas (BFA, 1999).

Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times (Part 2)
di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art | Napa, CA
June 23–December 30, 2018

Resistance Reverb: Movements 1 & 2 was included in the exhibition, Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times, Part 2, at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa in 2018. The exhibition featured new art commissions with works from the permanent collection to engage audiences in ideas that matter. Be Not Still, Part 2, also included new projects by Victor Cartagena, Ranu Mukherjee, and Lexa Walsh, each responding to the evolving sociopolitical climate through a topic of their choice. View the exhibition brochure here.

Face Forward: Self-Image & Self-Worth
Richmond Art Center | Richmond, CA
March 27 - May 19, 2017

Several of Lava Thomas’s works were included in the group exhibition, Face Forward: Self-Image & Self-Worth. The exhibition explored forms of self-portraiture, presenting a diversity of approaches to issues of identity, race, gender, status, and societal values.