JOha harrison
"I think of my work as fragments in being part of a whole: drawings, paintings, photographs, and films. They are improvisational works that speak to the abstract and subconscious of the world through language and knowledge. My pieces are schematic, inviting the viewer to move with the work and interpret it, as intimate as their capacity will allow. Similar to the Black artist as they engage with art, I feel we gravitate to parts of a whole because we are parts of a whole; expressing ourselves microscopically. But the vantage point couldn’t be greater.
My work thus far has used the frame of the answer to propose a question of modernity, and in the process, point to stereotypes of difference that are hidden in plain sight. I have found the ideas of surrealism, minimalism, and abstraction to be useful in the rearranging of perceived ideas. The works I produce are placed in the canon of abstract expressionism, in hopes of making visible what is often overlooked in the romanticization of the artist. Contrarily as a Black artist, I feel the romanticization is dismissed, kept as a barrier to keep distance and to gauge when to romanticize and when not to. Black art is almost in a vacuum of sorts, it speaks history, future, warnings, lessons, and present-day all in a whisper; if you choose to hear it over the systemic silencing of the current world, you may hear thunder."