CURRENT

Lava Thomas: Lineage
Jessica Silverman
621 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94108
Sept 10 2026 – October 24, 2026

Lineage follows Thomas’s family from emancipation through Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow era. Through her methodical drawing practice and deep genealogical inquiry, Thomas brings monumental portraits into direct relation with drawn and printed primary-source records. Together, these works trace her ancestors’ acts of self-determination through military service, marriage, legal testimony, education, and claims upon the state, recovering a family history of perseverance and aspiration that is at once familial, civic, and national. Rooted in the history of one American family, Lineage reveals how generations of Black Americans claimed and exercised the rights of citizenship after emancipation. At a moment when accounts of Black life are being written out of this nation’s history and anti-Black caricature and denigration are again being amplified by the state, Thomas brings the dignity, agency, and self-regard of her ancestors’ self-fashioned images into public view and draws her family into American history.

Repossessions
Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture at Levine Center for the Arts
551 South Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC, 28202
Sept 4 2026 – Jan 3, 2027

The Slaughter List, Illuminated (2026) is included in Repossessions. Repossessions brings Black artists together to transform documents and objects from the era of enslavement into powerful works of truth and repair. Curated by Dr. Bridget R. Cooks, the exhibition reclaims these artifacts to confront the legacy of slavery through bold re-imagination. More information here. Artists included: Chelle Barbour, Marcus Brown, Rodney Ewing, Shanequa Gay, Kenyatta A.C Hinkle/Olomidara Yaya, Curtis Patterson, and Lava Thomas.

Resistance and Reverb: Movement 1
Obama Presidential Center Museum
6001 S. Stony Island Ave., Chicago, IL 60637

Resistance and Reverb: Movements 1 (2018) is currently on view at the Obama Presidential Center Museum. The immersive installation features over 600 tambourines whose pink surfaces evoke the Women’s Marches of January 2017 and moments of feminist activism from the 1980s and 1990s. Dispersed within the cloud of tambourines are fragments of political speeches excerpted from past and present voices of women's resistance–ranging from Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech, "Ain't I a Woman," to Alicia Garza's powerfully succinct message, "Black Lives Matter.” The installation fuses historic and contemporary expressions of activism into a unified statement of solidarity, resilience, and resistance. The distinct elements of the installation represent a multiplicity united in solidarity, yet still retaining individual agency: power placed directly in the hands of the people.