Curatorial

commemoration, critique, clarion call: the artist’s eye
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Lava Thomas’s first curatorial project. Commemoration, Critique, Clarion Call, was part of The Artist's Eye exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The Artist's Eye also included curatorial projects by artists Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman and John Zurier with works selected from BAMPFA's vast permanent collection, as well as new works for the exhibition. Thomas’s curatorial offering commemorated the 50th anniversary of Betye Saar's iconic The Liberation of Aunt Jemima with a selection of works by a multi-generational group of Black women artists including Betye Saar, Mildred Howard, Erica Deeman, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Carrie Mae Weems, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Sadie Barnette, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Adrian Piper.

Aspects of the Artist’s Dilemma (2022), a new work created for the exhibition, takes its inspiration from Aspects of the Liberal Dilemma (1978) by Adrian Piper. The work is created from enlarged pages of Lava Thomas’s journal where she reflects on the issues that she encountered while working on The Artist’s Eye exhibition. Aspects of the Artist's Dilemma begins with the quote by Angela Davis “You have to act as if it were possible to change the world, and you have to do it all of the time.” Through this work, Thomas urges museums (BAMPFA included) to contend with the legacies of exclusion and structural racism that exists within and throughout their institutions and to enact a process of change that will facilitate a sense of belonging and agency, not only for Black women, but for all people.

Solidarity Redux: Black Lives Matter (CLIP)

2021-22. Video 36:02

In Solidarity Redux: Black Lives Matter (2022), Thomas’s first work in video, the artist read aloud the racial justice solidarity statements released by museums across the country in the wake of worldwide Black Lives Matter protests after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others in the summer of 2020. In activating these statements through speech, Thomas draws parallels with the action required by stated promises that may or may not have been delivered, with statements from institutions with “much work still to be done,” contrasted with statements by institutions whose mission is to support Black communities and Black artists.