Omari Booker - The Creator
The Parthenon and Centennial Park Conservancy are proud to present Kindred Links by Omari Booker and Henry L. Jones in the East Gallery of the Parthenon from Friday, October 29 through Sunday, February 13, 2022.
Booker and Jones, two of Tennessee’s premier African American artists, created over two dozen artworks included in this new exhibition of paintings, video, and found objects. These pieces form a physical and spiritual survey of the North Nashville community and the impact of gentrification on the heritage of historically Black neighborhoods. Omari Booker’s realistic landscapes, historical icons, and portraits of North Nashville, at once contrast and compliment Henry L. Jones’ colorful transcendental forms. According to Booker, the collective work is “an exploration of the global microcosm that is North Nashville. Our intention is that, by entering the community through the doorways of history, ancestry, family and legacy, you will engage in conversations that highlight its past, illuminate its present, and reclaim its future.”
Henry L. Jones - We Long to Be
Graduates of North Nashville’s Tennessee State and Fisk Universities respectively, Booker and Jones traveled the streets of North Nashville observing the change, both good and bad, going on in their old neighborhood. Their stories and reflections are captured in a documentary video by filmmaker Lesa Dowdy that will be screened alongside the art in the exhibition. Additionally, each artist was filmed working at their studio, with Booker setting fire to one piece, while Jones demonstrates “Gibbing,” a technique he describes as “a spiritual layering of paint using my hands instead of brushes.”
Kindred Links also includes three exhibition cases of vintage architectural fragments collected by Henry Jones from a demolition site on North Nashville’s Monroe Street. A local poet laureate with new work written for the exhibition, Jones calls the sets “Past, Present, and Future,” relating how the house was once a community education center where he worked learning to renovate area homes. He says he was “inspired from memories of North Nashville. I found myself thinking back and comparing the changes. Now, when visiting and seeing a particular place there, the past returns like walking back in time...paths moving like a flowing river. This journey is spiritual as I link images, colors, or anything that will become part of a painting. It's a combination of personal and social history to understand. Currently in the community, historical connections are being transmuted. Places just disappear.”
A free public closing reception, including an informal gallery talk by the artists, will be held on Thursday, February 10, 2022. RSVP to the closing reception.
Thank you to the Tennessee Arts Commission, Sandra Schatten Foundation, Memorial Foundation, Regions Bank, Jackson, Metro Parks, and Centennial Park Conservancy for underwriting the Parthenon's exhibition and educational programming.