“Make work.” Laura James shared this concise but highly effective mantra with me throughout a go to to her Bronx studio in West Farms. A poster bearing the phrase hangs on her wall — a nod, she defined, to the affect of Marcus Garvey’s industrious philosophy. James doesn’t search institutional permission; she makes artwork relentlessly, owns the means of creating, and lets the work maintain her group. She is a beloved presence within the cultural ecology of the Bronx. She is a multidisciplinary artist, manages a thriving group backyard in her neighborhood of West Farms, and is the founding father of BX200: Bronx Visible Artists Listing. She was raised in Brooklyn by Antiguan dad and mom and has lived within the Bronx for many years.
In instances of resurgent fascism and assaults on progressive training, James does what the second calls for of her: She makes work. James’s apply — encompassing portray, illustration, and sculpture — weaves collectively themes of race, gender, class, historical past, and spirituality with readability. Amongst her most poignant contributions is the continuing American Historical past collection, which she started in 1999 after studying in regards to the brutal 1998 killing of James Byrd. Jr., a Black man, by White supremacists in Texas. Byrd endured horrific torture; his killers chained him to a truck and dragged his physique for 3 miles.
Two current work from the American Historical past collection, “Not Even Previous” and “Inheritance” (each 2024), are daring creative interventions that instantly resist current right-wing backlash towards vital race concept and instructing the historical past of racism in the US. “Not Even Previous” confronts the dismissive sentiment that Black individuals should merely “transfer on” from slavery and systemic racism. The titular allusion to the William Faulkner quote, “The previous isn’t useless. It’s not even previous,” is made visceral by the portray’s brutal and unforgettable imagery.
A big tree stands on the heart of the portray, its branches bearing the our bodies of lynched Black individuals. Beneath, a dense pack of plain-clothed White spectators gathers on the fitting, whereas Ku Klux Klan members in pointed white robes stand to the left. One determine hangs from a department, engulfed in flames. On the backside of the composition, rows of gravestones bear the names of murdered Black individuals: Sandra Bland (1987–2015), Breonna Taylor (1993–2020), and Sonya Massey (1988–2024), amongst many others. Some names, like Trayvon Martin (1995–2012) and Tamir Rice (2002–14), are instantly recognizable to the general public as a result of their murders galvanized the motion for Black lives, whereas others like Lizzie Dur (1882–95), whose loss of life did spark protest on the time, have pale from broader public reminiscence.
On the prime of the portray, scenes of police brutality unfold. A Black individual lies wounded and dying on the road as an onlooker movies, and one other is shot a number of instances whereas fleeing. A bunch of incarcerated males in black and white striped jumpsuits is chained collectively, whereas a guard holds a shotgun at their heads — a transparent reference to chain gangs, teams of imprisoned individuals exploited for his or her labor. Close by, a jail cell underscores how mass incarceration stays linked to those ongoing histories of racial oppression.
In distinction to the outside scenes in “Not Even Previous,” James’s “Inheritance” (2024) takes place inside a home inside. A rich White household’s lounge with mild inexperienced partitions turns into the positioning of a fraught racial encounter within the portray: Black persons are laboring throughout the dwelling whereas the White owners are at leisure. This work is a part of James’s bigger apply of representing Black ladies home staff to honor their labor and expose Black labor’s relationship with White leisure. The scene already evokes discomfort as a result of racialized historical past of home work, however nearer inspection reveals different disturbing particulars. The lady cleansing the window and the person tending the grandmother’s ft are shackled with a ball and chain, a person serving drinks wears a muzzle, and one other girl, lacking a foot, balances precariously on a chair to scrub a mirror. These surrealist parts are rooted in histories of enslavement and applied sciences of abuse on the plantation, whereas the symbols of torture recommend slavery and its enduring legacy. The portray means that the previous of exploited labor is just not but totally previous. On the prime of the canvas, wallpaper panels depict slave ship imagery, with Black our bodies tightly organized within the ship’s maintain. All of us inherit this scene of racialized domesticity, and James compels us to face it.
James attracts inspiration from people artwork traditions wealthy in vibrant shade and storytelling. Much like Ethiopian devotional portray, her compositions characteristic a number of narrative scenes directly in numerous elements of the composition. James’s simplified figural varieties, brilliant palette, communal scenes, and unapologetically political themes additionally align with the legacy of Mexican muralism. These visible storytelling methods powerfully convey Black American histories and join them to world struggles, making even essentially the most painful narratives extra accessible to broader publics.
Collectively, these work present accessible entry factors into conversations about race, reminiscence, and justice which might be actively being suppressed in our colleges and establishments throughout the Trump period, making them best visible instruments for resisting censorship and fostering vital training. Certainly, James speaks of her work with urgency: “The work function a report of what occurred. And we are not looking for this to occur once more.” She continues, “I don’t have all of the solutions, however I refuse to look away. I’m bearing witness to what occurred.” Lots of the scenes that James paints come instantly from historical past books she reads, like Lest We Overlook: The Passage from Africa to Slavery to Emancipation (1997). As instructional curricula are more and more Whitewashed, James’s work insist on remembering and reckoning with the previous as a residing and needed a part of our historical past. These works function visible anchors for discussing the inextricability of anti-Blackness from US historical past. There could be no such factor as impartial portray in a world indelibly marked by racial violence.
