How individual are memories? And, further extending this question, how collectively tangible do memories become when we share pictures of our memories to one another? How can these depictions of memory be painted and which forms do they take on when personal, political, or social conflicts are nestled within memory? The artists take different approaches in their unique painterly languages as well as in their choice of motifs, backgrounds, and symbols to find answers to complex questions.

Matthew Eguavoen (b. 1988, Edo State, Nigeria) uses color and composition to raise questions about gender, race and history, particularly linked to Nigeria and Africa. In his portraits, he uses a combination of oil paint, acrylic paint, charcoal, and graphite pencils to document stories that encompass the emotions and demeanor of his muse to the viewer of his work. He depicts the vulnerability and openness associated with expressing ones self, as well as the lack of efficient awareness of the concept of depression and on mental health in Africa. Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988, Baltimore, MD, US) creates luminously rendered, expressionistic oil paintings that synthesize a wide range of art historical and cultural references to mine the elliptical contours of memory. His allegorical and autobiographical compositions explore themes of Black masculinity, fatherhood, legacy, and remembrance, complicating and subverting visual stereotypes and misrepresentations. Often working from archival family photographs, Gibbs creates tender, emotionally evocative vignettes that highlight moments of quiet joy and sorrow, rest, and mundane beauty while engaging deeply with the materiality of his process. Throughout his intimate, intuitive paintings, Jammie Holmes (b. 1984, Thibodaux, LA) presents poignant scenes of Black families, communities, and traditions in the American South, drawing on memory to capture moments of celebration and struggle. Incorporating portraiture, symbolism, and written text into his work, Holmes intersperses reflections on social, cultural, and political concerns with deeply felt meditations on notions of family, home, and Blackness. There is a delicate balance between the personal and the political in Holmes’s oeuvre: He is a storyteller whose determination to imbue his work with his own subjective, lived experience is itself a subtle, effective political gesture. Shaina McCoy (b. 1993, Minneapolis, MN) works with richly hued oil paints, McCoy creates selectively-colored canvases that depict imagery drawn from photographs of family members and other intimates. Finding a formal balance between artists such as Kara Walker and David Hockney, McCoy builds faceless figures from thick, tactile layers of glossy paint; the resulting images are vivid and vibrant anonymous portraits, loaded with sentiment and mystery. McCoy’s work captures the ambiguous and familiar essence of memory, radiating both history and wonder.