Justin Randolph Thompson

Black Prosperity

17.11.18 – 17.12.18

 

 

Black Posterity is a project that reflects upon the legacy of tragedy through the lens of redemptive victory and spiritual ascension. The project creates an intersection between “Blue” and “White Collar” labor while breaking down social mobility and corporate ascension forged with folk labor tools. Fortification is coupled with celebration in a series of works that draw upon office furniture,boomboxes and 1930’s war canons.

 

Canons is a series of sculptural paintings that examine the inheritance of tragedy and oppression as the foundational characteristic for the positioning of Blackness within the Canon of art. Based on protective shields from the cannons of the 30’s, designed to protect the perpetrator of violence, these works re-elaborate illustrations from the same period from a weekly periodical the Domenica del Corriere that sought to sell the news through the production of dramatic theatricality. The phallic forms that emerge from the works entice and aestheticize aggression and sooth the trophy collecting of dominance.

 

Garment Bags is a series of sculptural paintings examining active forms of submission. Based on the bags used to protect elegance from dust and to prepare garments for travel, the works engage a conversation of migration to reflect upon displacement, ascension, upward mobility and the politics of respectability.

 

Golden slippers is based on past work around shoe polishing and gold leaf. The golden sneakers come from a traditional African-American song that talks about preparation for death and the elegant golden sneakers ready for doomsday. The arms are work gestures.

 

All the Good Times is a sound based video installation examining transatlantic aspirations in land lock as a metaphor for generational divides and the fetishization of historiographies. Archival footage shot by the artists’ respective grandfathers blends with new footage while a soundscape transforms a traditional tunes into an aggressively celebratory jazz infused piece littered with repetitive inconclusive processions. The installation examines the role of nostalgia coupled with the legacies of creole cuisine and the Black Atlantic, questioning the distancing of technology and spirituality.

 

Climbing Holds is a sculptural installation that examines strategic  socio-political climbing. Based on the grips for indoor rock climbing the work draws upon Martin Luther King Jr.’s Mountaintops speech as a reflection on aspirations of mobility and the notion of climbing upon our ancestry.

 

I’m not interested in posterity, which is really a paltry form of eternity.

Leonard Cohen

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Justin Randolph Thompson is an artist and educator of new media born in Peekskill, NY in '79. Living between Italy and the USA. UU Since 2001, Thompson is a co-founder of Black History Month Florence. He has exhibited internationally and has participated in numerous residencies in the USA. and in Europe at places like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Reina Sofía, the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, the Mobile Art Museum, the American Academy in Rome and more. Thompson has received numerous awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, Franklin Grant Grant Grant, The FCA Emergency Grant, The EAF of Socrates Sculpture Park and Jerome Prize of Franconia Sculpture Park and Visual Artist Grant of Marcelino Botin Foundation.