Background

Tomashi Jackson was born in 1980 in Houston, Texas, United States.

Education

Tomashi Jackson spent her childhood in Los Angeles.

In 2010, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Two years later, she earned her Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. In 2016, she obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art.

Career

Tomashi Jackson began her career at the turn of the 20th century. One of the debut exhibitions where she presented her artworks for the first time was the 2001 group show ‘Soul on Rice: A Two-Woman Exhibition’ at Togonon Gallery in San Francisco. Then, she has exhibited at many art spaces and galleries throughout the United States, including the New Museum in New York City, the Walker Art Center, MoMA PS1, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and others.

Jackson has also curated several exhibitions, including 2008 ‘Everything There and Not There’ and ‘Publication-Schmublication’ at the Broadway Gallery in New York City, and ‘Fever Grass’ (A Benjamin Menschel Fellowship Exhibition) at the Cooper Union New York in 2009.

In addition to art, Jackson has tried her hand in academic teaching and lecturing at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Boston University, School of Visual Arts, and New York University.

One of the recent art events of the artist is the Whitney Biennial of 2019. Nowadays, Tomashi Jackson lives and works in New York City where her art is represented by Tilton Gallery.

Achievements

• Tomashi Jackson is an accomplished artist whose paintings, performances, and installations are recognized by the art circles of the United States.
  
  She has obtained such awards as Richard Lewis Bloch Memorial Prize from the Cooper Union and Toby Devan Lewis Prize from Yale School of Art. She has also been a recipient of many fellowships and grants, including those from the Cooper Union, Presidential Tuition Fellowship and Graduate Student Life Grant from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship and Blair Dickinson Memorial Scholarship from Yale University School of Art among others.
  
  The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art acquired Jackson’s art in its permanent collection.

Works

More photos

• work of art

  • Girls Clubs of America (Integrated Anacostia High School 1957)

  • Rule of the Rustics (Krista)

  • Citrus Flavored Drink (Over and Under) (Bolling vs Sharpe Briggs vs Elliot)

  • Grape Fruit Punch (McKinney Pool Party) (Topeka Classroom)

  • Mario All Alone (Davis v County School Board)

  • Alteronce in Hannah

  • The Essence of Innocence: McKinney Upside Down

  • Still Remains

  • Interstate Love Song (Friends of Clayton County Transit) (Pitts Road Station Opposition)

  • Avocado Seed Soup

  • Color Study in 3 Reds, 2 Blacks, 2 Greens

  • Vibrating Boundaries The Law of the Land

  • Upright, Colored, and Free

  • States' Rights (brown et al. vs The board of Education of Topeka, Kansas)(Limited Value Exercise))

  • Head Over Heels Still Life, 2015

  • Grape "Drink Box (Anacostia Los Angeles Topeka McKinney)”

  • Girls Girls Girls (Belton (Bulah) V. Gebhart)

  • Magnet School I

  • Untitled (Simultaneous Contrast) (Anacostia Classroom)

  • Untitled (Color Problem) (Your Problem Not Mine) (Topeka Classroom)

Views

Quotations: "I am interested in the perception of color and the value of human life in public space using the history of school desegregation, contemporary resegregation, and geometric abstraction as catalysts. My practice establishes formal and intuitive processes discovered in the space between languages of optical color theory and legislative governance around societal color interaction, with contemporary implications. I investigate relationships between color, sound, complex narrative, and emotion, leading back to color. Imagining a conceptual loop around figuration, materiality, and light. I am also interested in the relationship my paintings have with artificial and natural light. Color is optical and racialized; projection, reflection, obstruction, and beautiful."