Angela Davis Johnson

Angela Davis Johnson (born 1981) is a community-informed, interdisciplinary artist who migrates between Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Arkansas. Her work is rooted in the traditions of Black people in what’s known today as the United States American South and is inspired by the collective ancestral memory of the entire African Diaspora. Davis Johnson uses archival images, acrylic and oil paint, found objects, bluing, fabric, beads, strings, hums, fragments of song and poetry, body movement, and gestures to bridge the happenings of the past, present, and future. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and has exhibited in galleries and museums, including Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Mississippi Museum of Art, and the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

Angela Davis Johnson
Born
Orlando, Florida
NationalityAmerican
EducationSelf-taught
Known forPainting, sculpture, installation art, ritual performance art
Websitehttps://www.angeladavisjohnson.com/

Early life

Angela Davis Johnson was born in Orlando, Florida.[1] She and her family later moved to Virginia, where she attended Governor's School for the Arts, an art magnet school in Norfolk, Virginia.[2] Davis Johnson's interest in art began at a young age. She was first inspired to create art by her mother, who had returned to school for fashion design when Angela was 4 and would share what she had learned with Angela and her siblings.[2] When Angela was 14, she, along with her mother and three siblings, were evicted from their home in Norfolk and moved to Lambrook, Arkansas.[3] Despite being impoverished, her mother encouraged Angela and her siblings to embrace and explore their creativity through singing songs, reading, and whittling, and would purchase art supplies.[3]

Style

A self-taught artist,[4] Davis Johnson explores "universal connections, identity and historical occurrences through personal symbols" in her work.[5] Davis Johnson's work addresses several issues facing black women including trauma, domestic violence, poverty, gentrification, state-sanctioned violence, the silencing of black women, and displacement.[6][7][2][8]

When asked what she hoped people will take away from her body of work, she responded:

I want people to feel the complexity of the embodied experience of black womanhood. I want people to feel that when they see my work. We’re not just superheroes. We are all things. We are souls living this life. I want people to experience that in my work, feel the depths of that. I want people to recognize and feel their soul. See the thing beyond the construct, which is light, you know. To me it’s like the past, present and future. It’s all happening right now in this moment. I want people to feel that when they come by my work, when they’re away from it. I want people to witness all of that in all of our [black women artists'] works.[9]

She incorporates scraps of paper and fabric into many of her oil paintings, as an homage to her seamstress mother[7] and in an effort to introduce humble materials into fine arts spaces.[4]

Current Projects

Davis Johnson is a new Artist-in-Residence at Fountainhead, a Miami, Florida arts organization. Her residency begins in June 2022 along with two other artists, Natalie Ball and Shizu Saldamando, and is titled "Time for You: BIPOC Mothers".[10]

Personal life

Davis Johnson is a single mother of two children.[4]

Selected work

Solo exhibitions
  • 2018 Magenta Portraits, Bradbury Art Museum, Jonesboro, AR
  • 2018 Blu Blak: Angela Davis Johnson rendering and hollerin sketches, or Blue Hole Scraps from the Archives, MINT Gallery, Atlanta, GA[6]
  • 2017 Ritual || Reasoning + Codes, The Butler Center, Little Rock, AR
  • 2016 Wondrous Possibilities of Falling and Flying, THEA Foundation, North Little Rock, AR
  • 2015 Ashes on the Fruit Trees, Argenta Art Gallery, North Little Rock, AR
  • 2015 black. lace arrangements, University of Fayetteville, Fayetteville, AR
  • 2014 Array of Humanity, Art Connection, Little Rock, AR
  • 2014 Grace Beneath the Floating World, Texarkana Regional Arts Center Texarkana, TX
  • 2013 Kinfolk and the Apothecary Dream, Gallery 360, Little Rock, AR
  • 2013 Down Home Musings, Donaghey Plaza Gallery, Little Rock, AR

Selected group exhibitions and collaborations
  • 2019 National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta, GA[11]
  • 2018 Identity at Arms Length, Still Point, Atlanta, GA
  • 2018 O Freedom, My Beloved, Zucot Gallery, Atlanta, GA
  • 2018 Ain’t I a Woman, TILA Studios, Atlanta, GA
  • 2018 MINT Leap Year Retrospective, Atlanta, GA
  • 2017 Headspace, The Healthcare Gallery, Baton Rouge, LA
  • 2017 The Gathering, WonderRoot, Atlanta, GA
  • 2017 A Sense of Place, Fayetteville Underground, Fayetteville, AR
  • 2016 The Hollerin Space, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS
  • 2015 The Hollerin Quiet, ROOTS Week, Arden, NC
  • 2015 Vox Femina, Arts Center of the Ozarks, Siloam Springs, AR
  • 2014 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, Mason Murer Gallery, Atlanta, GA
  • 2014 56th Annual Delta Exhibition, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
  • 2013 Texarkana Regional Arts & Humanities 25th Annual Show Texarkana, TX
  • 2013 Arkansas League of Artist Members Show Cox Creative Center, Little Rock, AR
  • 2013 Delta Artists Show Tunica River Park Museum, Tunica, MS
  • 2013 People & Places, Ellen Hobgood Gallery, Heber Springs, AR
  • 2012 ALA Annual Art Show, Butler Center Little Rock
  • 2012 Small Works on Paper, Arkansas Art Council Traveling Exhibition
  • 2011 Venus Envy, Baton Rouge Center for Contemporary Art, Baton Rouge, LA

Permanent collections
  • Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, Little Rock, AR
  • Central Arkansas Library System, McMath Library Branch Little Rock, AR
  • Brooks Co., Wabash, AR[1]

References
  1. "Angela Davis Johnson CV" (PDF). Angeladavisjohnson.com. Retrieved Mar 23, 2019.
  2. "Q & A | Artist Angela Davis Johnson | CommonCreativ ATL". Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  3. Johnson, Angela Davis (2016). "The Artist-Activist: History and Healing through Art". Black History Bulletin. 79 (1): 27–33. doi:10.1353/bhb.2016.0011. JSTOR 10.5323/blachistbull.79.1.0027. S2CID 245666174.
  4. Feaster, Felicia (16 April 2020). "Talented emerging Atlanta artists to watch". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  5. "Meet the 2015 Visual Arts Scholars". Alternate ROOTS. 2015-06-25. Archived from the original on 2019-03-23. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  6. "Kind of Blue: Angela Davis Johnson tends to the wounds of the diaspora with "BLU BLAK"". ARTS ATL. 2018-07-23. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  7. Smith, Kelundra (2018-12-11). "Overlooked in Atlanta, Black Female Artists Try Miami". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  8. "BIO | Angela Davis Johnson". Mysite. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  9. "TILA Blog | Atlanta | TILA Studios". tila. October 2018. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  10. "Fountainhead Current Artists-in-Residence". Fountainhead.
  11. "National Black Arts 2019 Event Guide". Issuu. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
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