Reversal, Reinterpretation, Reinvention
Solo Exhibition by Amiah Jones
August 20 - 24, 2024
Reception: Friday, August 23rd | 6-8PM
More About Reversal, Reinterpretation, Reinvention
Reversal, Reinterpretation, Reinvention is a series of works that stem from a liminal space. This space is filled with the constructs we build between facing our pain and healing ourselves. These paintings, drawings, and prints are parts of me that have healed.
As a biracial woman in the LGBTQ+ community, my space is oftentimes dark, much like the palette in many of my works. This place is bombarded with repeated instances of systematic oppression fueled by racism, sexism, homophobia, and capitalism. From turning to history in order to understand such indoctrination, to rethinking and reshaping how to see the world clearly, these three objectives have helped me continue to see humanity with hope. I wish for a world where everyone’s truths are accepted with the care we only save for ourselves. After all, the light that saves us is not shined upon us, but embedded within the choices we make together.
“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized.”- Audrey Lorde
More About Amiah
Amiah Jones (b. 1999) is a Filipino-African American painter and printmaker based in Thomasville, North Carolina. Using the human figure, pattern, reflection, geometry, and a limited palette, her work embodies the layered richness of our fractured, but retranslated history. Born to a Filipino mother and an African American father who grew up during the civil rights movement, Jones’ experience in the Southern U.S. has shaped her passion for human rights and the visual arts. Her work has ignited her efforts to bridge the gaps between what makes empathy so vital today; unconditional love and fear of the misunderstood.
“Going to school in a rural town while having black inner city friends forced me to serve as a bridge, constantly reminding my friends of the resilience and education of our ancestors, while fighting to uncover the same truths to peers and teachers at school. I would come up with metaphors, sometimes making people laugh just to get the attention off of the sudden discomfort I was reciprocating. My work now serves as that uncomfortable, ironically playful but heartbreaking bridge.
We live in a society where making space to exist freely, for many, is automatically seen as political. While this experience holds true, beauty, humor, and familiarity provide a gateway - a gateway for people to accept a complexity that’s historically misunderstood, historically unwanted. It’s incredibly difficult to find your own gateway, your own visual language, but my obsessions with play, conflation, and abstraction have allowed me to negotiate for my acceptance, negotiate for change, negotiate for love. I’ve been rooting for an ongoing connection with my blackness that’s richer than the quick anger, cry, absolve, and I embrace that connection the most through the arts. Through oil painting and printmaking, I grasp at the dimming sparks of goodness that fall within the crevices of what we call humanity. The little acts of kindness, the subtle jokes we make in pain, and the sparks of love that go unnoticed through the dark.”
Jones is currently residing in Thomasville, NC. She received her BFA in painting at the University of North Carolina Greensboro in May of 2024.
Follow on Instagram: @_amiahjones
Email: amiah.jones@icloud.com
