“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns” – Octavia Butler
Framing explorations of space, geography, mapping, and land/waterscapes, especially of the African diaspora, New Suns in Lawndale Art Center’s Cecily E. Horton Gallery features new installation, painting, and drawing by Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud. This exhibition is a culmination of Ayanna’s participation in Lawndale’s 2023-24 Artist Studio Program.
View the New Suns exhibition catalogue.
Installation images by Tamirah Collins.
Stars, acrylic paint on wood, various dimensions, 2024
Part of New Suns exhibition at Lawndale Art Center, 2024
Land/waterscapes and Blackness (Wetlands/Swamps and former enslaved peoples; Maryland Marshes, the Barred Owl, and Harriet Tubman; Huntsville State Park and Civilian Conservation Corps, Oleanders and Clarence Pickens; The North Pole and Matthew Henson), photo transfer and dye on fabric, mixed media, various dimensions, 2024
Part of New Suns exhibition at Lawndale Art Center, 2024
Landscapes that Eric Gardner, Ahmaud Arbery, and Sandra Bland could have been near (New York park; Satilla Shores, Georgia; and Prairie View garden), photo transfers, triptych, 24"x11" (each panel is 8”x11”), 2024
Part of New Suns exhibition at Lawndale Art Center, 2024
Waterways studies, acrylic on wood, triptych, 36"x12" (each panel is 12”x12”), 2024
Part of New Suns exhibition at Lawndale Art Center, 2024
Part of “After Carolee” exhibition
Artpace, San Antonio, Texas
Curated by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi
Jan 7, 2021 - Apr 25, 2021
Score: Field Work, a site-specific installation by Houston-based artist Ayanna Jolivet McCloud. Incorporating elements of sound, performance, writing and installation, the exhibition includes work by the artist, together with a selection of women artists, musicians, and performers, whose work question women's role in sound art, and explore the materiality of sound through a feminist perspective. Transforming the gallery into a multi-sensory environment, the works in the exhibition include an installation by the artist of reverberating bells that suspend from the ceiling in the center of the gallery, along with a series of scores and writings by women musicians and sound artists, which span across the gallery walls. Additionally, the exhibition includes a collection of sound featuring audio performances and interviews by women musicians/sound artists.
During the run of the exhibition, the artist presents two nights of live performances, readings and workshops by local women artist/ musicians including Ruth Langston, Garden Medium (Rebecca Novak, Carol Sandin Cooley, Sandy Ewen), Stalina Villarreal, Aunt Okonkwo. Megan Easely, Veronica Anne Salinas, Sonia P. Flores and Victor Hernandez, Anisa Boukhlif and Lisa Harris (telematically).
art league houston, january 2017
photos: alex barber
Score (How to Hold On to Chasms and Fill with Matter), Project Row Houses, 2015, Curated by Sally Frater
Complement, Art Center/ South Florida, Miami Beach, Florida, Co-created with Patrick de Castro, 2006
Under, Polvo Arts Studio, Chicago, Illinois 2004
Co-created by Joseph Eddy Pierre, part of Identities: Independent Artists International Encounter, Morelia, Michoacán, México, 2005
Two bodies of work presented part of “Trace” exhibition at the Gregory School African-American Library.
Photos of plants, flowers, and bark in historic African-American sites throughout Houston
Sites include: College Memorial Park, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, Blue Triangle, former site of the Ancient Order of Pilgrims, former home of Rev. Jack Yates, former site of Camp Logan in Memorial Park, and various sites throughout 4th Ward/Freedmen's Town
Mixed-media (Digital photo, cyanotype and paint)
About “Trace” exhibition:
Israel Mccloud and Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud recall local historic, Black sites that are no longer or that have been forgotten in our newest exhibit, Trace. The Artwork in this exhibition brings visibility to these cultural sites in an attempt to recall the vital histories, memories and impact of Black life in Houston. Trace builds on the creative practices of the Mcclouds (father and daughter); he, as a muralist, sign painter and multidisciplinary artist working in various neighborhoods; and she, as an installation artist creating site-specific land installation and maps. The exhibition will include collages of local landscapes of African-American histories; paintings centering on language as it relates to neighborhoods and poetry, among other works of art.
