Homecoming / Homegoing: Weaving Expressions of Community, and Healing at the Phillips@THEARC
Zsudayka Nzinga, Artist. Photo by Mariah Miranda
Before visiting Zsudayka Nzinga's Homecoming / Homegoing exhibition at Phillips@THEARC, I regarded fabrics merely as a collage component. The six artworks on display by Nzinga showcase the expressive power of textiles, where fabrics serve as frames, depict figures and vegetation, create landscape backdrops, and convey concepts of meaning like grief.
I was struck by how the fabrics extended beyond the traditional framing, reflecting Nzinga's intention to mirror the ongoing effects of past events in America’s history. In several artworks, Nzinga focuses on outdoor scenes, a departure from her past themes centered on family and interior spaces. This exhibition broadens Nzinga’s body of work and engages viewers in conversations about America's founding history and its complex intersections with the Black experience.
In Run Away But Come Back Petit Marronage Act 1, the artwork depicts two Black men at a plantation. Behind them is a cabin with a red, blue, and white striped roof set against a starry navy sky fabric. With a comforting arm around the first, the man on the left looks calmly out to the plantation. The man on the right looks towards the horizon with a sad expression. To the right, five men are cast in varying silhouettes of the American Flag. A fabric of red and yellow flowers frames the entire scene. The artwork Run Away But Come Back Petit Marronage Act 2 portrays a similar scene with women as the central figures.
Zsudayka Nzinga. Run Away But Come Back Petit Marronage Act 1, 2023, Acrylic, ink, decorative paper, and fabric on canvas.
These artworks explore Petite Marronage, a form of resistance where enslaved people briefly left plantations before returning. These escapes were crucial acts of self-care, allowing them to assert their autonomy despite harsh conditions. Many returned because of family ties and the sense of home. The sentiment is poignantly expressed through the fabrics of red and yellow flowers that cover the slave cabins. Nzinga frames the scene with motifs of stripes and stars, juxtaposing America's ideals with its practice of slavery. The artworks serve as visual narratives, echoing Nzinga's desire to "use her collage paintings as counter-narratives that address gaps in America and art history." An oral history inspired the Petit Marronage series passed down in Nzinga's family.
In The Domestics, Nzinga continues her interrogation of America’s history through a group portrait of adults and children in front of a building made with striped fabrics. Figures are rendered in fleshy tones of acrylic, while others appear as black-and-white scribbles, or silhouettes. Though the portrait seems innocent, its meaning is far from benign. Nzinga based this collage on a historical photograph of slaveholders and enslaved workers serving as symbols of wealth.
This piece invokes earlier critiques of displays of wealth in the art, such as Thomas Giansborough's Mr & Mrs Andrews. Just as Gainsborough unmasks the exploitation behind the English gentry's opulence, The Domestics exposes the abuse underlying the American Slaveholder's wealth. Nzinga renders the slaveholders as silhouettes, casting them into the shadows while highlighting the dignity of the enslaved with focused expressions. This gesture acts as a deliberate act of care, affirming their humanity while providing a sense of home long after their time.
In Sharecroppers Porch, various states of rest contrast with the theme of forced labor in the Petite Marronage series. A woman on an oversized yellow rocking chair and two women chatting suggest moments of reprieve. Nzinga has replaced the foreboding skull-filled doorways and windows from the Petitte Marronage series with colored flowers, symbolizing growth. Despite these moments of ease, Maya Angelou's memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, revealed the harsh realities of sharecroppers in the South: “No matter how much they had picked, it wasn't enough. Then they would…end the season as they started it. Without the money… to sustain a family for three months,” highlighting their struggles.
Zsudayka Nzinga. The Sharecropper's Porch, 2023. Courtesy of the artist
Even so, Sharecropper's Porch shows people finding comfort in their communities and creating a sense of home in the worst conditions. As Nzinga shared, “There's something different about picking cotton for yourself rather than for others. For many, sharecropping was a way for Black families to sustain themselves and build businesses.
Two artworks in the exhibition, Never Lose Me and What Remains, signal a shift in Nzinga's portrayal of grief from a physical to an abstract representation. In Never Lose Me, a young boy in a rose-red cloth with his eyes closed tightly embraces a formless figure made from marbled fabric. The boy’s arms and hands are more prominent than usual, with his right hand merging into the figure's body. The figure, visible only from the back and unresponsive to the embrace, takes up most of the composition, enveloping the canvas. The defined black outline of the boy's body in acrylic flesh tones contrasts sharply against the figure’s shapeless form. The rest of the canvas is filled with blue floral patterns.
Zsudayka Nzinga. What Remains 2024. Acrylic, marker, ink, decorative paper, and fabric on canvas.
The scene explores themes of grief, absence, and presence. The boy's exaggerated arms symbolize his efforts to hold onto someone gone, reflecting the emotional struggle of dealing with loss. Although the figure is not physically present, their presence permeates the canvas, dissolving everything in its wake. In a shift from her past practice, Nzinga created the marbled fabrics used in this artwork, reflecting her desire to experiment with fabrics and their materiality—how their texture, weight, and interactions with other fabrics affect the visual impact of her works.
The exhibition showcases how collage can express seemingly contradictory ideas, demonstrating that acknowledging one truth does not negate another. Nzinga's collage paintings confront past injustices, reminding us that our histories continue to shape the present. They show that only by confronting the past can we move from grief to genuine healing.
The exhibition Homegoing / Homecoming is on view at Philips@THEARC through September 26th, 2024. Admission is free.
Oluseyi Akinyode, a Day Eight arts writing fellow, grew up in the bustling city of Lagos and now calls DC home. She holds a B.S. in Finance from New York University and is a 2024 recipient of the HumanitiesDC grant.