Leasho Johnson, A sudden hatred of fields, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim.
An erotics of art
"Reconciling anxieties of queer intimacy and longing, Johnson’s first solo presentation at Mariane Ibrahim is an experience in queer Caribbean anti-coloniality and becoming. A shared oppression of nature and queer desire underlies Johnson’s riotous distemper, watercolor, oil, acrylic, dye, and charcoal works. Building up deeply felt spaces of social exclusion and fear in the context of transphobic violence in Jamaica, Johnson embraces the coexistence of multiplicitous identities from the abstracted body of enslaved field workers to mythic tales of Anansi to the shared pursuit of deep sea creatures masquerading as swinging Black men. Johnson creates new ways of seeing from a space of Afro-Caribbean vulnerability in an attempt to make visible forbidden axes of sexual intimacy, survival, and misconstrued racial differences in Caribbean and queer communities."
Excerpted words written by Pia Singh for the Chicago Reader.