Tomashi Jackson

Tomashi Jackson (b. 1980, Houston, Texas) 

Tomashi Jackson’s (b. 1980, Houston, TX) research-driven multimedia practice combines painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, video, fibrework and performance to explore the influence of social histories and aesthetic theory. Tracing an intersection between 1960s colour theory, histories of abstraction, love songs and archival imagery, Jackson interrogates the ways in which aesthetic and political edicts of colour are fundamentally interwoven. A painterly approach anchors her practice; from a kaleidoscopic layering of colour and vinyl strips onto her increasingly sculptural surfaces, to projecting colour through her videos and photographs, and a theoretical approach to colour in her fibrework. Jackson fuses historical images with earthen materials that reference sites and subjects of public concern, including: education policy and voting rights in the United States; the implementation of eminent domain in New York City since the razing of Seneca Village in the 19th century, and the history of governments trafficking drugs as a means to fund wars. By using nuanced colour and collage strategies, Jackson invites the viewer to consider material experiences of painting, the ways in which colour perception has influenced the governance of public spaces, and how marginalised communities preserve and empower themselves.  

Jackson received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2010; earned her MS in Art, Culture and Technology from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in 2012; and received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale University School of Art in 2016. She was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, was a 2019 Resident Artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture; the recipient of the 2022 Roy R. Neuberger Prize and received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2020. Jackson has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including Tufts University Art Galleries, Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill; Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus; and Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw. She has participated in group shows at the Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among many others. Jackson’s work belongs in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; MOCA, Los Angeles; Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. She has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art, and Cooper Union, and has been a visiting artist at New York University. Jackson lives and works in Cambridge, MA and New York City, NY.