Affinity and Invention: Justin Randolph Thompson's Palm Series
Adrienne L. Childs || [ CURATORIAL STATEMENT ] use compass to view walls
Curatorial statement
Justin Randolph Thompson describes his life and work in Italy as an African American expatriate artist in terms of Benedict Anderson's notion of an "imagined community" in which affinity and invention help him to construct a personal and artistic identity. In order to form a sense of community in Italy, Thompson seeks out black faces in crowds and studies images of blacks in Italian art. Justin operates in a culture where historically the black body has been considered exotic and ornamental, a compelling symbol of difference. He often creates works that respond to the representation of blacks in which he sees his own reflection, interrogating the history the black presence in Italy and at the same time constituting that very presence. Thompson is among a number of contemporary artists who engage and challenge the tropes of blackness that permeate western art historical canon.
Drawn from the imagery of the palm tree in the Greco-Roman and Christian art historical tradition, Thompson's Palm series conceptualizes an axis between African American history and western iconography. In antiquity, the palm frond represented victory. Associated with Christian martyrs, the palm symbolized immortality, triumph and paradise. An outgrowth of his "Martyrs" series of figural sculptures fashioned from hand-bent, rusted steel, the Palms point to the pathos and triumph of martyrs while evoking the African American family tree, often wind swept, with dead ends and missing limbs. Constructed with found quilts and steel, the patched, frayed fabric represents both a melancholic passage of time and the sense of community inherent African American quilt making traditions. Although Thompson transforms this symbol of victory and paradise into the shreds of time-ravaged memories, the family tree remains firmly rooted.
What interests me as a curator is how Thompson combines an acute consciousness of race and memory in African American history and culture as well as his own personal history with a constantly unfolding and shifting understanding the history of western art and its complex relationship to blackness.
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Justin Randolph Thompson describes his life and work in Italy as an African American expatriate artist in terms of Benedict Anderson's notion of an "imagined community" in which affinity and invention help him to construct a personal and artistic identity. In order to form a sense of community in Italy, Thompson seeks out black faces in crowds and studies images of blacks in Italian art. Justin operates in a culture where historically the black body has been considered exotic and ornamental, a compelling symbol of difference. He often creates works that respond to the representation of blacks in which he sees his own reflection, interrogating the history the black presence in Italy and at the same time constituting that very presence. Thompson is among a number of contemporary artists who engage and challenge the tropes of blackness that permeate western art historical canon.
Drawn from the imagery of the palm tree in the Greco-Roman and Christian art historical tradition, Thompson's Palm series conceptualizes an axis between African American history and western iconography. In antiquity, the palm frond represented victory. Associated with Christian martyrs, the palm symbolized immortality, triumph and paradise. An outgrowth of his "Martyrs" series of figural sculptures fashioned from hand-bent, rusted steel, the Palms point to the pathos and triumph of martyrs while evoking the African American family tree, often wind swept, with dead ends and missing limbs. Constructed with found quilts and steel, the patched, frayed fabric represents both a melancholic passage of time and the sense of community inherent African American quilt making traditions. Although Thompson transforms this symbol of victory and paradise into the shreds of time-ravaged memories, the family tree remains firmly rooted.
What interests me as a curator is how Thompson combines an acute consciousness of race and memory in African American history and culture as well as his own personal history with a constantly unfolding and shifting understanding the history of western art and its complex relationship to blackness.
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