“He is a black man. He is often thought of as nothing, a cipher. But he has layers upon layers upon layers.” — Zadie Smith

Pullman Porters & Maids: Invisible Labor, Visible Legacies, curated by Juelle Daley, presents a new body of work by artist Shane-Jahi Jackson, developed through his research residency at the Newberry Library in Chicago and informed by the archives of the Pullman Company. Through an ensemble of figurative paintings, Jackson explores the lives and labor of the porters and maids whose work helped define the elegance of American luxury rail travel, even as they remained largely unseen, unheard, and unnamed. The exhibition also reflects on the enduring legacies of their labor in the families, communities, and histories they helped shape.

Join us for an opening reception on Friday, June 5th from 6PM to 9PM at the Block House Gallery, 11137 S. Langley Ave., Chicago.

"When Time Belongs to Us" highlights Black youth as a time of discovery, curiosity, and boundless possibility.

The exhibition imagines what it would mean to linger in that freedom-allowing Black children to fully experience innocence without the weight of societal expectations.

Shane-Jahi Jackson's figurative paintings capture joyful, reflective moments of childhood. His work acts as a shield against the challenges that await in adulthood, offering snapshots of wonder, play, and presence untouched by the pressures placed on their futures.

Griffin Museum of Science and Industry’s Black Creativity began in 1970, as a tribute to the culture, heritage and contributions of African Americans. This ongoing program celebrates the history of Black innovation while championing opportunities for today’s youth to explore STE(A)M in service of a more equitable future rooted in community, creativity and discovery.

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.

This exhibition, Our Reality Not Your Pathology, now sixty years later represents a rebuttal to the famous Moynihan Report which sought to distill the Black family as deeply broken, deviant, weighed-down by misery and deprivation. The ensemble of paintings by Shane-Jahi Jackson provides his personal assessment  using his own family and the friends he deems family to illustrate the strength, resilience and joy that exist within the Black family.  

Paying Dues and other Floral Commitments is a deep meditation on the urgent need to honor our unliving loved ones and those still alive. Shane-Jahi Jackson’s (b.1987; Denver Colorado) florals is also a rebuttal to a world that often eclipses African American’s humanity, value and importance. For the artist, his flowers function as living altars.

A bouquet of flowers is ubiquitous to the idea of “an offering” or “a gift” even with its expected short lifespan. This exhibition, however, turns this notion of flowers as a temporary gift on its head by suggesting that the figures are the real gift and a love that is enduring through time. Shane-Jahi’s flowers represent a homage, celebration and a declaration of love for his children, family, and for Black life in the figurative paintings included in the exhibition. His flowers, in fact, act like regal ornaments and praise songs watching over his loved ones.

This exhibition focuses on how two Midwestern figurative painters, Ellen Holtzblatt and Shane-Jahi Jackson, memorialize and document those they hold dear without idealizing portraits. Like the renowned portraitist Alice Neel, they are unafraid to reveal the ambivalence, conflicts, tenderness, and joy of the institution of family. Transfixed by a desire to represent the inner contours of their subjects, the painters use the act of painting in different ways as a jumping-off point to explore the rawness of their relationship with the sitters. Each painting is an unveiling of truths, disappointments, depictions of the unsaid, and the thorny topic of unconditional love within families.