The landscape is a compelling metaphor for memories, spiritual journeying and imagining new worlds.
In “Old Suns,” a small yet profound exhibition by multimedia artist Iman Person at the End Project Space, I’m reminded of this phenomenon. “Old Suns” is Person’s first solo exhibition in Atlanta, on view through Sept. 1.
The exhibition is inspired by Person’s cultural fieldwork, inherited ancestral land in St. Ann, Jamaica, and personal memories of her familial experiences with dementia and Alzheimer’s. The exhibition channels themes of memory, Indigenous and African cosmology and passages of time. These themes are worked out through glazed earthenware vessels and tablets, wall-mounted clay sculptures and a hanging ephemeral sculpture.
Credit: Photo by Alice Choi
Credit: Photo by Alice Choi
The show also features real-time, live weather data from St. Ann comprising humidity, deep ocean sounds, wind and moon phases. Person merges these reverberating sounds with high tonal frequencies, poetry and snippets of the Kromanti language of the mountainous regions of Jamaica, conjuring layered soundscapes.
The summoning sound of African drumming — danga-danga da, danga-danga da, danga-danga da — led me toward the gallery. Energetic tones bounced through the concrete halls, echoing from a distance. The commanding music led to a lone drummer — smiling, his head joyfully bobbing as he beat upon his drum. This was a tonal embrace, a prelude to the experience that awaited. Standing at the threshold of Person’s ethereal landscape, I sensed a communal belonging.
A chromatic field of shifting lights beamed elegantly across six wall-mounted ceramic clay sculptures. From a luminous white to soft peach, then rose, the light beams bounced on, over and through the richly hued textures, revealing spectators’ faint silhouettes as if bathed in light.
The gallery floor was covered with Georgia red clay soil. This native soil can also be found throughout Jamaica.
Uneven mounds of pebbles were formed in the corners of the gallery, while silver-painted shell fragments glistened through the moist soil like illuminated crystals or burrowing silver-winged creatures. As if the blush lights and humidity conspired together, the gallery space became a hazy yet enchanting environment, transporting viewers to a distant yet intuitively familiar locale.
Suggestive of cyclical time, “Zamani,” 2024, is fleshed out in thick, adjoining clay bands bearing an incised line motif and an obsidian scrying mirror — commonly used in divination — nested within its form. The bands are dynamic and whimsical, alluding to unyielding movement as hematite crystals and glittering specks of pink opal coalesce in the sculpture’s gritty texture.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Iman Person
Credit: Photo courtesy of Iman Person
The surrealistic resin sculpture, “Disterra,” 2024, links to the artist’s practice of working with bioplastics since 2018. Composed of a membranous material, “Disterra” is suspended in midair, containing hibiscus flowers, soil collected from the garden of Person’s mother and other plant life native to Los Angeles. The clusters of flora appear tightly bound within the work’s fleshy skin. In a personal communication, Person shared she scented the sculpture with the plant hormone methyl jasmonate, which transfers through the air as an eco-transmitter, a mode of communication for plant life.
“Disterra” holds a double meaning. Its ephemeral nature — the work is intended to decompose naturally — alludes to ideas of impermanence. Viewing the amorphous work hanging from the ceiling conveys a suspended portal to be looked through as if peering into different dimensions.
Its elongated form also reminds me of memory’s fragility. Tuned out from the mingling crowd, I began to ruminate on the idea of being denied one’s memory and the terror of forgetting.
As if birthed through the Earth, surrounded by offerings of crushed shell and bone fragments, the murky-colored “Balming Vessel IV,” 2024, embodies animal and plantlike characteristics. Its bulbous base harnesses a central, stumpy-looking ambiguity, shielded by root-like outgrowth with spawning buds.
The beige-painted roots appear calcified, reminiscent of Indigenous and African diasporic ritual practices of embellishing objects with ornaments and layers of substances such as white clay, perfumes and oils. Person filled the interior with rainwater, considered a powerful element in ritual practices.
According to Person, “Balming Vessel IV” represents a sacred space in Jamaican cosmology known as the Balmyard where one undergoes spiritual and physical transformations and healers access what the artist coins as “ancestral time.”
ART EXHIBIT
“Old Suns”
Through Sept. 1 at the End Project Space. Noon-4 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and by appointment 1870 Murphy Ave. SW, Atlanta. instagram.com/the_end_project_space.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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