How can art drive change in the future? How will the world we live in shape the art of the future? These are questions that are asked in “Across the Universe.”
Cambridge-based artist Tomashi Jackson’s mid-career survey, “Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe,” is currently on display at the Aidekman Arts Center through Dec. 8. This exhibition, curated by Miranda Lash, the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, is accompanied by a catalog featuring essays by Lash, Robin D.G. Kelley, Liz Munsell, Megan O’Grady and Zoé Whitley, as well as an interview by Larry Ossei-Mensah with Jackson and Nikita Gale.
This exhibition marks the first comprehensive showcase of Jackson’s work over the past nine years. The survey reflects her commitment to using art to shed light on patterns of oppression, activism, resistance and societal advances. Through her work, Jackson fuses historical research with innovative strategies of color and collage to create evocative prints, paintings, videos, textiles and sculptures that explore systemic inequities in American democracy.
As visitors explore the gallery, they tour Jackson’s development as an artist and her research into essential issues such as educational access, transportation, housing, voting rights and labor rights. The exhibition boasts diverse multimedia pieces, 3D installations and video works. Jackson’s mastery is evident in her distinctive use of color, material and music.
Since 2014, Jackson has integrated Josef Albers’ theories of color with her research into the histories of skin color laws and policies in America. She noticed an overlap between Alber’s views on color in his 1963 book “Interaction of Color” and Thurgood Marshall’s ideas on the relativity of color in his arguments for the desegregation of schools. As Jackson explains in a quote displayed on the gallery's wall, “Marshal and Albers concluded that color is relative, and what a viewer perceives a color to be is determined by the color nearest to it. Color is always changing, and contrary to popular belief, it is not absolute.” She employs the relativity of color to examine how color perception has influenced U.S. policy and has the potential to empower communities of color.
One of the most striking pieces in the gallery, “Vibrating Boundaries (Law of the Land)(Self Portrait as Tatyana, Dajerria, & Sandra),” exemplifies Jackson’s use of this color theory. The “vibrating boundaries” refer to the effect of highly saturated contrasting colors interacting at their edges. In this video composition, Jackson collaborated with Houston artists Patrick Renner and Emily Peacock to reenact the harrowing experiences of Tatyana Rhodes, Dajerria Becton and Sandra Bland with police brutality. In the video composition, the artists held five poses, each for one minute while conjoined by a tubular knitted color study. The knitted color study is one of Jackon’s hand-knitted fiber works, which uses varied colors of yarn to explore skin color juxtapositions. The video composition fuses Alber’s ideas of the relativity of color and vibrating boundaries to powerfully communicate the struggles endured by Black Americans in relation to police brutality.
Jackson further uses collage techniques, juxtaposing historical images with earthen materials, to visually articulate experiences of injustice. In one collection, she integrates materials from Colorado’s landscape into her paintings. One such work was “Among Harvest,” which addresses the challenges faced by Latinx immigrant farmers in the Hamptons, often subjected to police harassment and deportation threats. By incorporating soil from the Parrish Art Museum grounds and local potato bags, Jackson pays homage to the farmworkers who worked the land.
The final section of the gallery focuses on Jackson’s connection with music. It highlights her alter-ego, Tommy Tonight, an amorous male R&B singer inspired by 1990s Black boy bands. The exhibition features a rare live performance of Jackson as Tommy Tonight lip-syncing the entirety of the 1978 Doobie Brothers album “Minute by Minute,” intertwined with conversations with her mother regarding domestic labor among her family in Texas and California. This piece highlights how Jackson combines her art with her musical passions to illustrate multigenerational stories of struggle and triumph among communities of color in America.
Jackson’s exhibition extends into "Artist Selects" — a recurring program hosted by Tufts University Art Galleries that invites exhibiting artists to explore and curate a selection of works from the Tufts University Permanent Collection to complement their exhibitions. Jackson’s work powerfully illustrates the role of art as activism and gives voice to marginalized communities and sparks conversation about critical inequalities in our democracy.
Ultimately, “Across the Universe” embodies the goal of Tufts University Art Galleries: to empower artists and contribute to the creation of a more just world through art.
