The image of the Black woman in Western Art is one riddled with stereotypes, racial mythologies, visions of servitude and sexual transgressions. In 1994, Harvard’s Dubois Institute began a research project which later birthed seven volumes on The Image of the Black in Western Art by Harvard’s scholar Henry Louis Gates and David Bindman. All volumes document in detail the fate of ‘black presence’ in European Art. This exhibition of abstract figurative paintings continue in the same vein but removes all references to European Art to focus squarely on the Black female model but not as a tool to reaffirm white superiority and Christian morals.Shane-Jahi Jackson, in Black Female Presence, evades providing an instructional manual for the viewer on how to interpret his paintings of Black women. His “no comment stance” is a deliberate one, resisting the impulse to qualify or explain the why of these paintings. Instead, he demands the same reaction to the sublime on seeing Botticelli’s Renaissance painting of the Birth of Venus. They, too, are beautiful.

The ensemble of works posits the idea that Black women should be a portal to the universal. He invites the viewer to leave their cliches, bias and judgement at the door.

Shane-Jahi celebrates these women.