Jamele Wright’s Got his MOJO Working
P. Andrews-Keenan
Jamele Wright Sr. traffics in the flotsam and jetsam of urban life, believing that found materials contain magic. A pile of discarded baby clothes, odd pieces of wood, unused canvases, even a rubber ball can find its way into the artist’s work. Wright channels what he calls the “materiality of the land” by using red clay dirt in his work as well. Growing up as a child rooted in both the Midwest and the rural South, the dirt is his homage to Black immigrants who carried it as a talisman to protect them as they migrated from the South to the North. Those things, say the artist, are ‘full of history’ and he weaves them into his canvas of choice — vibrant Dutch Wax fabric, a manufactured cotton cloth with batik printing.
His work is inspired by the Great Migration of Black Americans, who left the familiar in the hope of something better. His assemblages channel the spirit of the Gris Gris bag, said to have originated in Ghana. The small pouches, referred to in the Americas as Ju-Ju bags, were carried by Southern travelers filled with remnants of the south they left behind. The former spoken word artist and Hip Hop aficionado says people would carry a rabbit’s foot, feathers, a charm, perhaps a ring, something that reminded them of something good. These items he says are reminiscent of transit, of movement, they are circular and full of history.”
“My work creates a conversation about family, tradition, the spiritual and material, the relationship between Africa and the South. My process is influenced by the way Hip Hop gathers different cultures together through sampling and is charged with an energy channeled and passed through the Pan African lineage.”
His current exhibition FLAT SPLAT Just Like THAT is on display at September Gray Fine Art Gallery in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. It is inspired by the movie The Wiz, the Motown reproduction of The Wizard of Oz, that reimagines Dorothy and her journey home from Oz as a young black schoolteacher. In the movie Dorothy is the product of the Great Migration.
Wright began working with fabric because he wanted his work to have a sense of movement even as it hung on the wall, something he couldn’t achieve with a flat canvas. He says the canvas was distracting him from the story he wanted to tell. He began by learning how to sew and was influenced by watching Project Runway with his nine year old daughter. He started out using the Dutch cloth and his professor suggested he work on the reverse side of the fabric, which he said gave his work more of a sculptural presence.
The Dutch wax print fabric Wright uses in the exhibition, also known as Ankara, is commonly used in West Africa and prized because the color intensity is equal on the back and front of the fabric. Wax prints are also a type of nonverbal communication among African women that carry their messages out into the world. Prints might be named after personalities, cities, buildings, sayings or occasions. The fact that the fabric was manufactured and sold by the Dutch to the Africans, for Wright, speaks to the conundrum Blacks face in this country of not being embraced fully as American, yet not being African.
When asked if he has a responsibility to document the African American experience the Ohio native says, “If I go to another country I’m considered an American, and considered Black, there’s no way I can get around that. So I align with those in the AfriCOBRA movement in the belief that if you’re not making art that is effecting change then why are you making art?”
The artist’s work understandably draws comparisons to canonical drape paintings created by Sam Gilliam, yet he finds his artistic comradery lies more with Al Loving, whose work concentrated on the tension between flatness and spatial illusionism. In 1969, Loving famously became the first African-American to have a one-person show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Not a bad mantel for Wright to inherit.
Wright serves as his own curator, hanging his works and allowing them to develop new shapes through the process. During the installation new patterns and marks are created through the overlaying of the fabric. He thinks that as African Americans we inherently find peace in imperfections and busyness. “We are taught in art theory that you’re supposed to leave space within the painting or abstract for someone to rest their eyes. But there is no rest for us, so I want to make that work so busy that you have to find rest in the busyness.”
The series, at September Gray’s Gallery, Wright says represents his painting for the sake of painting, and excavating the concept of Black joy. “I am exploring abstraction, and the way that we encounter the painting surface. He’s also reflecting on some of the early American landscape paintings of artists such as Robert S. Duncanson, whose work now hangs in the Biden White House.
When asked about what’s next for him, top of mind is how his work is going to be considered in the canon. As he contemplates new work, as always, he is heavily influenced by family and what stories need to be told that aren’t being told. He’s now considering black coal miners because his grandfather and uncles were coal miners. Writing and research are 80% of his process, creation 20%. “I like repurposing he says, nothing is really over, nothing is really ever finished.”
A virtual tour of “The New Magic, that also includes the work of Danny Simmons, Jr. may be viewed at https://septembergrayart.com
