Image by Deana Lawson
Deana Lawson’s self-titled ICA exhibition requires the body to surrender to slowness. Endless Black bodies framed, hung, and cast against white walls. These bodies stew in their frames like a Sunday dinner's gravy. You may walk slowly, as we have, while the lens of your respective subjectivities attempt to focus.
The first room of the exhibition features two photographs of Black woman on the burgundy wall to the left of the curators’ introduction: a close-up of a woman’s face, she wears gold earrings and her chin rests on top of her orange-ish painted nails; another of a woman laying nude, looking over her shoulder to the camera, on top of a mattress with no bedding.
And so it begins, in Deana Lawson’s world, Black women are the center of the universe, the sun that other planets revolve around. Her holographic scribbles onto a Black woman's stomach in “Deleon? Unknown” (2020) offers a counter-origin story to the fable of the white founding fathers. Black women are the creators of life.
It may be unsettling to see their nudity, when the camera has historically treated Black women’s anatomy as grotesque and barbaric.
![]()
Image by Deana Lawson
Still, Lawson attempts to displace the sensational, the pornographic, the sexualized through sensory overload: nude Black women of all shapes and ages and skin tones, falling against one another or standing alone or dangling off a couch’s edge or lounging in bed. The women all stare into the camera.
Deana Lawson’s self-titled ICA exhibition requires the body to surrender to slowness. Endless Black bodies framed, hung, and cast against white walls. These bodies stew in their frames like a Sunday dinner's gravy. You may walk slowly, as we have, while the lens of your respective subjectivities attempt to focus.
The first room of the exhibition features two photographs of Black woman on the burgundy wall to the left of the curators’ introduction: a close-up of a woman’s face, she wears gold earrings and her chin rests on top of her orange-ish painted nails; another of a woman laying nude, looking over her shoulder to the camera, on top of a mattress with no bedding.
And so it begins, in Deana Lawson’s world, Black women are the center of the universe, the sun that other planets revolve around. Her holographic scribbles onto a Black woman's stomach in “Deleon? Unknown” (2020) offers a counter-origin story to the fable of the white founding fathers. Black women are the creators of life.
It may be unsettling to see their nudity, when the camera has historically treated Black women’s anatomy as grotesque and barbaric.
Image by Deana Lawson
Still, Lawson attempts to displace the sensational, the pornographic, the sexualized through sensory overload: nude Black women of all shapes and ages and skin tones, falling against one another or standing alone or dangling off a couch’s edge or lounging in bed. The women all stare into the camera.
Is this the “erotic”? A term Audre Lorde articulated as power derived from the feminine—from women who choose feeling over logic. Although Lawson’s photographs do not necessarily sexualize her subjects, who are consensually nude with her, the photographs may never realize the “erotic,” in a site such as the ICA where there is the omnipresent risk of voyeurism and consumption, detached from any real sense of relationality or amongness to the subjects. Detached from feeling.
Elsewhere in the gallery, a Black couple discusses whether or not her photographs are racist. The man says: "yes," the woman says, "no, maybe, no."
It be ya own peoples. The ones who'll Queen and Slim you, sell you out to the white people. They'll hang your Black ass up in a white museum in the middle of White ass Boston so that the white people can say "look at the ass on this one." Nothing's changed, has it?
You, like the couple, may feel conflicted looking at Lawson's works. Her photographs are deceptively inviting, aesthetically rich in their off-whites(for non-whites) and bare Black skin which asks you to strip search it for bumps and bruises.
“I am an artist, not a documentarian,” Lawson said in an interview with cultural critic Greg Tate when asked about the complications that arise photographing Black individuals globally.
She is a photographer, director, and witch doctor who stitches pockets of the diaspora together like a Gee's Bend quilt to make myth. “The Garden” (2015) pays homage to Black America, the Caribbean, and the Congo with a Black couple entangled in a grassy forest, ambiguous in its location. Imagine a world, her myth goes, where slavery and colonialism had not violently flung descendants of Africans to different corners of the globe. Lawson transcends arbitrarily-created borders to envision a world where Black people everywhere are interconnected and in community.
Some may regard such renderings as woefully apolitical and plagued by American entitlement, either way, Lawson’s myth making prevents her intended audience from passively consuming her work.
![]()
What is real? What is not?
Lawson’s exploration of the Black interior, too, suspends reality. Her photographs of domestic spaces and family, “Young Grandmother” (2019) and “Blinky and Tony Forever” (2015) are a bittersweet gesture: Black bodies should be allowed to rest and exist leisurely with their loved ones. To be relieved from the social structures that demand their presence and labor.
How shitty it is then to have paid to see Blacks living it up better than we could imagine. Their audacity to gaze back at the camera, to lie nude in a home with full ownership of one’s Blackness, Blackity, Black, “Fuck You,” Blackness. The audacity to show that more is possible than the "ra-ra" rapper, the curvy "go-go" dancer, or the accidentally shot teenager on the news, or the police officer who called you a criminal when they really meant to call you a "nig—" nevermind
![]()
Alas, this is art, not documentary. The critiques of Lawson’s work in coloring vignettes of the Black experience arise not only because of her staging and direction, but perhaps too because of the dearth of Black representation in legacy institutions. Double vision—we see what Lawson stages, but cannot ignore where myth becomes jarring and reality overbearing.
Lawson's photographs stick to you like a fly trap and pull you into inescapable portals. You'll sit there vibrating in place, some sticky residue gluing your six feet to the gallery's maroon carpet. Each photograph is a more enticing sliver of bait that will keep you looking, though you might get hurt.
From wall to wall, photo to installation, installation to hologram, a hologram to collage, collage to video, leaving the gallery means searching for a way out.
Sign of exit, the lingering audio trail of her video installation plays you out of the gallery and back to the Boston Harbor--back to the water like a slave ZONG!
Some may regard such renderings as woefully apolitical and plagued by American entitlement, either way, Lawson’s myth making prevents her intended audience from passively consuming her work.
Image by Deana Lawson
What is real? What is not?
Lawson’s exploration of the Black interior, too, suspends reality. Her photographs of domestic spaces and family, “Young Grandmother” (2019) and “Blinky and Tony Forever” (2015) are a bittersweet gesture: Black bodies should be allowed to rest and exist leisurely with their loved ones. To be relieved from the social structures that demand their presence and labor.
How shitty it is then to have paid to see Blacks living it up better than we could imagine. Their audacity to gaze back at the camera, to lie nude in a home with full ownership of one’s Blackness, Blackity, Black, “Fuck You,” Blackness. The audacity to show that more is possible than the "ra-ra" rapper, the curvy "go-go" dancer, or the accidentally shot teenager on the news, or the police officer who called you a criminal when they really meant to call you a "nig—" nevermind
Image by Deana Lawson
Show me what I want, not what I long for.
Alas, this is art, not documentary. The critiques of Lawson’s work in coloring vignettes of the Black experience arise not only because of her staging and direction, but perhaps too because of the dearth of Black representation in legacy institutions. Double vision—we see what Lawson stages, but cannot ignore where myth becomes jarring and reality overbearing.
Lawson's photographs stick to you like a fly trap and pull you into inescapable portals. You'll sit there vibrating in place, some sticky residue gluing your six feet to the gallery's maroon carpet. Each photograph is a more enticing sliver of bait that will keep you looking, though you might get hurt.
From wall to wall, photo to installation, installation to hologram, a hologram to collage, collage to video, leaving the gallery means searching for a way out.
Sign of exit, the lingering audio trail of her video installation plays you out of the gallery and back to the Boston Harbor--back to the water like a slave ZONG!