Carmen Neely
Momus

In her review for Momus, writer Alexandra M. Thomas examines Carmen Neely’s solo exhibition a trace beyond the life of the body in Mexico City, describing the artist’s paintings as “writerly” abstractions that move fluidly between gesture, language, and memory. Focusing on Neely’s layered loops, scrawls, and script-like forms, Thomas considers how the works occupy a space between writing and image, where marks become emotional, tactile, and only partially legible. Situating the artist within a lineage of Black women practitioners including Shinique Smith, Kenturah Davis, and Mary Lovelace O'Neal, the essay frames Neely’s practice as part of a broader exploration of authorship, abstraction, and Black feminist mark-making.

 

The review further explores the role of opacity and withholding within Neely’s work, drawing on the writings of Susan Stewart and Christina Sharpe to examine how redaction, layering, and interruption function as aesthetic and political gestures. Thomas reflects on the artist’s use of painter’s tape, obscured passages, and dense accumulations of pigment to create surfaces that resist fixed interpretation while encouraging more sensory and affective modes of engagement. Rather than asking to be decoded, the paintings invite viewers to attend to rhythm, texture, color, and movement, positioning abstraction as a means of preserving intimacy and interiority.