Alonzo Davis: 20 Years in Maryland Exhibit

Guest curator Tomora Wright, shares, “Davis’ autobiographical body of work created between 2002 and 2022 offers mixed media works in various forms: collages, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. The exhibition is an intercultural and transhistorical arrival, as Davis fuses raw materials, tribal patterns, and abstract landscapes to document the experiences and influences of place and time.”

In the work, Davis interprets his archaeological reflections and the materiality of the cultures with which he connects whether the connection ancestral, aesthetic, political, or spiritual. The artist’s affinities with West Africa, parts of Asia, the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean, Mexico, Indigenous America, and the Southern U.S. are apparent throughout this work. The union of bamboo, wood, and beeswax with manmade materials—LED, plastic, rubber, synthetic fabrics, and metals serves as an artful acknowledgment of the dependence of new technologies on age-old natural resources and techniques – “high tech-low tech” in his words. Recurring imagery: boats, maps, paths, doorways, horizon lines, and mysterious portals highlight the artist’s intention- as an adventurer, seeker, or one in search of a destination, and inveigles the viewer into joining him.

The artist’s commentaries on global, social, and environmental realities are increasingly central to his practice: climate change, social justice issues, and immigration. The use of ballistic vests, boats, navigation charts, and windsurfing sails are visual metaphors the artist has chosen to address loss and the future of humanity. In his more recent works, Davis engages new media, a collaborative orchestration with other art mediums, such as video collage, performance art, dance, and socially engaged public interventions to unveil new relationships.

Ultimately, the work is tied together by the stories Alonzo Davis tells. Whether the spirit of these stories is palpable or intricately disguised, Alonzo Davis’ art pays homage to the people, cultures, and historical events that have played a central role in his art practice and made his arrival at this moment in time possible.