Across the Universe
“Across the Universe” offers a comprehensive look at Tomashi Jackson’s artistic practice over roughly the past ten years, spotlighting how she uses visual art to unearth under-recognized histories and patterns of resistance, power, and marginalization. Her work intertwines vibrant color theory, abstraction, and layered materials with archival research and personal story. Central themes include racial injustice, community empowerment, grief and loss (including personal loss), migration, and spatial politics—how geography, law, and policy shape who gets seen and who remains silenced. The exhibition also has a strong emotional core, as Jackson returns to Houston—the city of her birth—for this major survey, bringing into view her roots and the resonances of place, memory, family.
“Across the Universe” is a mid-career survey exhibition of Houston-born artist Tomashi Jackson, held at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). The show opened on May 30, 2025, and runs through March 29, 2026. It brings together nearly a decade of her work across multiple disciplines—painting, printmaking, video, photography, fiber, and sculpture—and centers on deeply researched historical, social, and personal themes. In assembling her pieces, Jackson draws on archival materials, community histories, interviews, and ephemera to explore how policies, laws, landscapes, memory, and grief shape lived experience, especially in Black communities. The exhibition includes site-specific works, installations that extend from walls into space with architectural references, layered surfaces using textiles and paper, and powerful multimedia video pieces.
Exhibition Description
Jackson’s work in “Across the Universe” spans a variety of media and modes of presentation. Some artworks are large abstract‐geometric paintings with halftone lines, crosshatching, washes and opaque color fields; others are sculptural or textile works that incorporate awning-style structures extending into the space, vinyl strips casting colored shadows, and layered papers and ephemera. Video installations appear, often drawing on local histories (e.g., events in Houston, court cases, stories from Black communities) to overlay archival footage, interviews, reenactments, or staged performance. An example is Vibrating Boundaries (Law of the Land) (Self Portrait as Tatyana, Dajerria, and Sandra), which layers video clips from incidents of racial violence (McKinney pool party; Sandra Bland case) with images of local artists in positions that mirror both aggressors and the vulnerable. Another work, Minute by Minute (Juneteenth in Five Points Denver, CO 2023 / Leaves Study by my Mother in COVID Isolation in Bakersfield, CA 2020), interweaves personal and family history (including recordings, photography) with broader themes of grieving and memory during the pandemic. Through such work, Jackson creates immersive environments that ask the viewer to reckon with history—not just as backdrop, but as active force shaping identity, loss, and resistance.
Gallery
