Loni Johnson: Remnants | Sept - Nov 2021
“This installation is based on creating a safe space for Black women. To serve as a platform for Black women to be seen and to reflect on who we are. How we navigate through the world and beyond. This installation will propose and engage in thoughts of how ancestral and historical memory informs our existence in a society that continuously tries to silence and erase us.”
Loni Johnson’s installation, Remnants, in Locust Projects’ Mobile Studio serves as a physical space to inform, heal, and offer counter-narratives that commemorate Black women and girls and celebrates their role in the community; a place where they can feel seen, apart from the world that continues to silence them and deem them invisible. In the words of poet Nayyirah Waheed, “All the women in me are tired”. An offering to Black women, Remnants responds to this collective experience by providing a place for all of these women in us to rest, normalize vulnerability, and dismantle the myth of the Black Superwoman while also reconnecting with and honoring our mothers, our mothers’ mothers and their mamas too.
The installation pays its respects to Black women through altars that include photos from the artist’s matriarchy alongside traditional elements from the West African Yoruba cosmology that can be found and gathered in neighborhood botanicas and Dollar Stores. Everyday objects and decorations such as sequin, lace, and cowrie shells are offered as tributes together with hair beads, gold bamboo earrings, and mirrors – objects found in local beauty supply stores and used in women’s’ daily life to adorn and enshrine.
Remnants invites visitors to pause, breathe, and reflect within the space, offering welcoming, comfortable, and cozy seating and cushions. Painted the very same pink color Johnson lovingly remembers from her maternal grandmother’s home, the space fosters a feeling of nostalgia and belonging. Johnson encourages visitors to engage with the work, presenting offerings within the space from which viewers can collect a piece of the installation to bring home with them, such as cowrie shells, hair beads, and candies, leading guests to ponder the question of what remains of them within the spaces they exit from.
As part of Locust Projects new Care program, Loni Johnson has been hosting Altar-making workshops inviting guests to bring meaningful objects —such as photographs, memorabilia, crystals, jewelry, and more — and build small altars as offerings to their ancestors. Loni Johnson guides participants to contemplate how we claim, navigate, and hold space; how ancestral and historical memory informs where, when, and how we occupy spaces; and how we carry and honor our ancestors in the spaces we move through. After answering the question “Why is it important for you to honor your ancestors?” and doing short introductions around the group, everyone builds their small altars, which are unified and on display in Locust Projects’ Mobile Studio.
September 18 Workshop
October 9 Workshop
October 23 Workshop
Loni Johnson: Remnants is on view at Locust Projects until November 6, 2021 | Wednesdays-Saturdays from 11am-5pm in the Miami Design District.
Locust Projects 2021-2022 exhibitions and programming are made possible with support from: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, The Children's Trust; The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant; Hillsdale Fund; the Albert and Jane Nahmad Family Foundation; VIA Art Fund | Wagner Incubator Grant; Diane and Robert Moss; Susan and Richard Arregui; Elizabeth Bailey; Cowles Charitable Trust; Diane and Werner Grob; Kirk Foundation; Diane and Alan Lieberman; Artis; and the Incubator Fund Supporting Sponsors and Friends.