Ayana V. Jackson

Ayana V. Jackson is a prolific photographer whose practice examines how Black women’s bodies have been imaged, circulated and misrepresented across the diaspora. Her work draws from 19th- and early 20th-century colonial archives, European and American portraiture, and the ethnographic gaze, re-staging and reimagining these histories to expose photography’s role in constructing racial hierarchies. The works in this exhibition span the range of the artist’s practice from 2013 to 2023, where Jackson draws from European modernism, Black equestrian histories and colonial portraiture. Jackson’s images explore where resistance meets rest, where fleeing becomes survival and where stepping back becomes a form of getting ahead.

Co-Curators: Iyana Esters, Artist and Folklorist and Stephanie Gibson, Director, Lilley Museum of Art.

Image credit: Ayana V. Jackson, Mary Fields: With a jug of Whiskey by her Foot, a pistol packed Under her apron, and a shotgun by her side, 2023, courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim Gallery.