NXTHVN: PG
Curated by Christopher Paul Jordan
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a dynamic group exhibition at NXTHVN, curated by Christopher Paul Jordan, a resident artist in the 2025 cohort at the artist space founded by Titus Kaphar. The show brought together a diverse group of artists, including Yale MFA candidates, a local New Haven painter, and fellow NXTHVN residents, creating a vibrant dialogue across disciplines and practices. I exhibited three sculptural works and a large-scale cyanotype on canvas. The exhibition sparked meaningful conversations around community engagement and explored themes of object permanence and the role of objects as vessels of memory within the African diaspora.
Object as Memory
The sculptural works I contributed to the show reflect my ongoing exploration of memory, material culture, and Black life through reimagined found objects. One piece repurposes familiar Newport cigarette boxes, transforming them into meditative reflections on visibility and consumer identity. Another work features a wheatpasted portrait affixed to a weathered wooden pallet, merging street-level aesthetics with intimate storytelling. "Sunrise, Sunset" consists of a bullet-riddled ceiling panel painted in soft pastel hues evocative of a coastal Connecticut summer, confronting violence and beauty in the same breath. The final piece is a painter’s drop cloth treated with cyanotype and overlaid with locally sourced brush, connecting land, labor, and the imprint of place through a tactile and photographic process.
