by guest curator Juelle Daley
Guild Room
December 14, 2025 - February 14, 2026
The image of Black women 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 and how it historically served to relegate blackness as the extreme opposite of white superiority.
This exhibition continues in the same vein but removes all references to European Art to focus squarely on the Black female model and not as a tool to reaffirm European representational superiority and Christian morals about the body.
Shane-Jahi Jackson’s, Black Female Presence, evades providing the viewer an instructional manual on how to interpret his series of semi-nude figurative paintings of Black women. His “no comment stance” is a deliberate one that resists the impulse to qualify or explain the why of these paintings. Instead, he demands that the viewer have the same reaction or sentiment of awe and the sublime upon seeing Botticelli’s Renaissance painting on the Birth of Venus for the first time without erotizing the image.
The ensemble of works posits the idea that Black women can also be a portal to the Universal and invites the viewer to leave their cliches, biases and judgement at the door.
Shane-Jahi celebrates these women.
RSVP for the opening reception on Sunday, December 14th from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the link below:
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
by guest curator Juelle Daley
Guild Room
December 14, 2025 - February 14, 2026
The image of Black women 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 and how it historically served to relegate blackness as the extreme opposite of white superiority.
This exhibition continues in the same vein but removes all references to European Art to focus squarely on the Black female model and not as a tool to reaffirm European representational superiority and Christian morals about the body.
Shane-Jahi Jackson’s, Black Female Presence, evades providing the viewer an instructional manual on how to interpret his series of semi-nude figurative paintings of Black women. His “no comment stance” is a deliberate one that resists the impulse to qualify or explain the why of these paintings. Instead, he demands that the viewer have the same reaction or sentiment of awe and the sublime upon seeing Botticelli’s Renaissance painting on the Birth of Venus for the first time without erotizing the image.
The ensemble of works posits the idea that Black women can also be a portal to the Universal and invites the viewer to leave their cliches, biases and judgement at the door.
Shane-Jahi celebrates these women.
RSVP for the opening reception on Sunday, December 14th from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the link below:
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
Shane-Jahi Jackson was born in Denver, Colorado in 1987. He is a self-taught artist and has exhibited in the Midwest at various venues like the University of Chicago, Reva & David Logan Arts Center in 2023 with Voices through the Orb and Generations: Opaque Mirrors of Beauty at the Saint Kate Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2024. In 2025, Shane-Jahi had two solo exhibitions at the Oak Park Public Library ‘s Main Gallery with the show, Not Your Pathology and at the Alliance Francaise de Chicago with the exhibition, Paying Dues & Other Floral Commitments. During the month September 2025, he was an Cicero artist-in-residence at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He lives and works in Morris, Illinois and is represented by D-Squared Art.
Shane-Jahi Jackson was born in Denver, Colorado in 1987. He is a self-taught artist and has exhibited in the Midwest at various venues like the University of Chicago, Reva & David Logan Arts Center in 2023 with Voices through the Orb and Generations: Opaque Mirrors of Beauty at the Saint Kate Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2024. In 2025, Shane-Jahi had two solo exhibitions at the Oak Park Public Library ‘s Main Gallery with the show, Not Your Pathology and at the Alliance Francaise de Chicago with the exhibition, Paying Dues & Other Floral Commitments. During the month September 2025, he was an Cicero artist-in-residence at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He lives and works in Morris, Illinois and is represented by D-Squared Art.
