HARTFORD, CONN.- Artist Steffani Jemison debuts a new multimedia installation of sculpture, lenticular prints, and drawings on brass and silvered glass as the latest iteration in fifty years of the MATRIX contemporary art series.
Jemison is internationally recognized for exploring questions around knowledge and communication. She considers the different codes, languages, and gestures invented by black Americans to communicate outside of the mainstream, which she distills into elegantly spare installations that include drawing, text, sculpture, sound, and moving image. In her new drawings, Jemison refers to an untranslated script invented by visionary black artist James Hampton in the mid-twentieth century, as well as religious symbols and cosmograms from Caribbean and Central African traditions. Other drawings and lenticular prints installed on and around a jungle gym-like steel sculpture depict flying or falling figures, evoking the myths of Icarus and the “Flying African.”
“It is an honor to bring Jemison’s intellectually stimulating works to the Wadsworth and to Hartford,” said Jared Quinton, Emily Hall Tremaine Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. “Jemison’s practice both continues and challenges the traditions of conceptual art and black radicalism, which have long been strengths of the Wadsworth’s contemporary program and collection. In the tradition of the best artists throughout history, she asks us to find new ways to access and absorb artistic meaning.”
This exhibition marks a return to Hartford for Jemison, who taught at Trinity College from 2012-2014. Public programs will include an artist talk, performance by experimental bassist Brandon Lopez, and a screening of Ousmane Sembène’s film Black Girl (1966). Videos by Jemison will be screened in the Susan Morse Hilles Gallery during the run of the exhibition.
Since its inception in 1975, MATRIX has been a forum for celebrating cutting-edge art and artists at the Wadsworth. The first exhibition series of its kind, the Wadsworth's MATRIX program has inspired more than 50 similar programs dedicated to contemporary art at museums across the country. Jemison’s MATRIX project marks the 196th installment of the pioneering series.
Steffani Jemison (b. 1981, Berkeley, CA) lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions, screenings, and performances of her work have been held at venues including Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2024); Greene Naftali, New York (2024, 2021); JOAN, Los Angeles (2022); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2022, 2020); Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon (2021); Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2021); Kai Matsumiya, New York (2019); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2019); Lincoln Center, New York (2018); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2017); CAPC Bordeaux (2017); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2017); Nottingham Contemporary (2017); RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island (2015); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015). Jemison is Associate Professor of Art & Design at Rutgers University; her first novel, A Rock, A River, A Street, was published by Primary Information in 2022.
Her work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Jemison received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
