Lessons From Above: Constellation Quilts
by Dawolu Jabari
The Galveston Artist Residency and Gallery is pleased to present Lessons From Above: Constellation Quilts by 2020-2021 GAR Project Grant Recipient, Dawolu Jabari. The exhibition features all new drawings and sculpture by Jabari, made over the last year while in residence at GAR.
About Lessons from Above: Constellation Quilts, Jabari writes:
”The Blackamerican experience is an Odyssey constructed on the schizophrenic landscape Martin Luther King Jr. characterized as ”two Americas.” Eight thousand miles and four centuries removed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, ”it is neither blood nor biology but history that makes a people.” Inspired by the Statue of Liberty’s commemoration of emancipation and the Civil War’s end, I use constellations to inscribe our nation’s mythology and folklore into the eternal fabric of space. These shotgun-house observatories are conceptual quiltings of King’s ”other America.”
Dawolu Jabari (born 1973, Houston, TX) is a visual artist who lives and works in Galveston, TX as a participant in the 2020-2021 Galveston Artist Residency program and the 2006 Skowhegan School of Paint and Sculpture. His work has been in The Houston Chronicle, The Associated Press, Art Papers, The New York Times and Art Forum Magazine and was a recipient of the 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant.
Jabari is a member of the artist collective Otabenga Jones and Associates exhibiting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2020); High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2008); the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC (2008); the Menil Collection, Houston (2007); and the 2006 Whitney Biennial: Day for Night.
About Lessons from Above: Constellation Quilts, Jabari writes:
”The Blackamerican experience is an Odyssey constructed on the schizophrenic landscape Martin Luther King Jr. characterized as ”two Americas.” Eight thousand miles and four centuries removed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, ”it is neither blood nor biology but history that makes a people.” Inspired by the Statue of Liberty’s commemoration of emancipation and the Civil War’s end, I use constellations to inscribe our nation’s mythology and folklore into the eternal fabric of space. These shotgun-house observatories are conceptual quiltings of King’s ”other America.”
Dawolu Jabari (born 1973, Houston, TX) is a visual artist who lives and works in Galveston, TX as a participant in the 2020-2021 Galveston Artist Residency program and the 2006 Skowhegan School of Paint and Sculpture. His work has been in The Houston Chronicle, The Associated Press, Art Papers, The New York Times and Art Forum Magazine and was a recipient of the 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant.
Jabari is a member of the artist collective Otabenga Jones and Associates exhibiting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2020); High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2008); the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC (2008); the Menil Collection, Houston (2007); and the 2006 Whitney Biennial: Day for Night.
Press:
Review in Glasstire
Review in Southwest Contemporary
Texas Talks Art w/ Dawolu Jabari and Eric Schnell