I made my first small works on paper this year while making studies for one of my most ambitious installations to date, the timeline paintings I created for my solo show at @thekitchen_nyc, showing Black divas throughout history performing the song “Home”, starting from the initial performance done by Stephanie Mills in 1975 and ending with the young Jazmine Sullivan in 1999. I see these text pieces painted in gouache on the walls of the black box (with the help of amazing art handlers at The Kitchen) as conceptual history paintings and wanted to paint them on that scale as this song is an important piece of American music history. The paintings also activate through AR the video work I made showing all of these iconic performances found on YouTube with an extra video at the end showing Stephanie Mills at The Apollo in 1987 introduced by Sinbad who acknowledges Mills as the original singer of the song. This note was necessary after Diana Ross fought and succeeded to replace Mills in Motown’s film adaptation of The Wiz in 1978. Hannah Black wrote a beautiful essay for the show I encourage everyone to read, published by @genderfail in the exhibition booklet. Swipe for an excerpt. “E. Jane: Where there’s love overflowing, April 1 - May 15, 2022” Installation Images Courtesy The Kitchen. Photo: Jason Mandella