Art as a Form of Resistance: In Conversation with Turiya Adkins

More Than a Notion is on view at Hannah Traore Gallery, 150 Orchard St., until June 1.

Prayers to a Cruel Cupid, Image courtesy of ALMA Communications

When we delve into an artist’s creative process, we often overlook the cathartic research that underpins each art piece or collection. In addition to extensive research, artist Turiya Adkins turns to many mediums for inspiration, including her living and deceased ancestors, Black athleticism, notable achievements made by Black people, and Adkins’ personal journey in conquering her own fears through the trials and tribulations of creating art.

Adkins’s latest exhibition at Hannah Traore Gallery, More Than a Notion, is her reflection on James Meredith’s March Against Fear. The title represents an insight into how Adkins’ grandma, whom she coincidentally visited in Washington D.C. during this interview, references people. Adkins didn’t understand the expression at first, but as she matured, she realized that when her grandma said someone was more than a notion, there was more underneath the surface than people could see.

“I wanted to give the impression that behind the mark-making and pure aesthetics of the work, there is this research,” says Adkins. “These marks are more than a notion in and of themselves.”

As a whole, More Than a Notion displays acts from crawling to running to flying. Adkins is fascinated with track and field, which led to the correlation of the March Against Fear. One of Meredith’s most famous photos depicts him crawling on the second day of the march. The running concept in More Than a Notion taps into Black dominance in sports, especially track and field, long jump, and how it relates to the Runaway Slave Act of 1850. 

270 Mile Situation, Image courtesy of ALMA Communications

“There are a lot of metaphors in track and field,” she says. “It’s a gun that starts the race, and everyone runs.”

Running then turns into flying. Adkins studied the accomplishments of the Tuskegee Airmen and honored her great uncle, who was one of them. She also wanted to pay homage to the several enslaved people who walked into the water at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island in Georgia during the mass suicide of the Igbo landing in 1803, which inspired her to paint Dunbar Creek in the exhibition.

“I’m meditating on the Tuskegee Airmen’s momentous accomplishments of flight and their contributions to World War II,” says Adkins. “Going into the long jump, there’s a particular piece in the show called Mikey P, the King, named after Mike Powell, who still maintains the long jump world record from 1991. It looks as though he is flying. There’s the essence of the long jump, and it relates to flying as a progression of Black liberation.”

Although Adkins wasn’t a long-term athlete or pilot herself, she felt an ancestral connection to track and field and the Tuskegee airmen. In addition to her uncle being a Tuskegee airman, her paternal grandfather was also a track coach in segregated Virginia. Her interests are more research-based and pondering the idea of Black people in survival mode and their capabilities.

From a Whisper to a Scream, Image courtesy of ALMA Communications

Many of the pieces in More Than a Notion are represented by layers. Once Adkins completes the research and heads to the canvas, the process can go smoothly or come with its challenges. As you look closely into some of the paintings, you will notice that some of the pieces fought with Adkins, causing her to layer over the work she wasn’t satisfied with. Seal of Faith and How to Marshal All My Love were two pieces that required multiple trials and errors.

“I was interested in dividing the canvas into grids and honoring the organizing principles of the grid,” she says. “I was trying to keep some of the history of the painting alive but also keep new discoveries at the forefront. It was a game of layering and fighting with myself against these fears I had in terms of palette, composition, and material investigations.”

All art is subjective, and the viewer often perceives abstract paintings in their own light. However, Adkins always aims to translate emotion and avoid stasis in every painting. Whether that be research, practice, writing, or the paintings themselves, she wants to give viewers a sense of motion through the journey of time. Like her references to Black athleticism and ancestral connections, Adkins also incorporates social justice and resistance in her pieces.

“For a long time, a lot of what informed these pieces was me thinking about the invisibility and hyper-visibility of Black bodies,” says Adkins. “By that, I mean that so often, we are invisible but then can quickly switch to being hyper-visible. How that can flip on us is so important and experiential. You can’t explain it. But it’s an experience that we all share, particularly in creative industries.”

The Ballad of Canga Brown, Image courtesy of ALMA Communications

In terms of resistance, Adkins quotes theorist and poet Fred Moten in Arthur Jafa’s film Dreams Are Colder Than Death: “Black Studies is the critique of Western civilization.” So, what does this mean to Adkins, and how she creates art? As she ponders her themes, colors, and textures, her abstract pieces intentionally often lack figurative elements — which, in the canon of figurative art in Western civilization, is her form of resistance. Many of Adkins’ paintings in More Than a Notion don’t have collages or source imagery, an emblem of her defiance.

Perception is another form of subjectivity in art. Adkins is satisfied with the idea that her identity is not always tied to the reception of her work. Because much of her work taps racial and social justice topics, non-Black viewers may not relate to or understand the depth of her work. However, to convey the art to all audiences, she opens her mind to those who desire to learn and understand the meanings behind her pieces and their interpersonal perceptions of the work.

“I’m hitting the ground running, still in the studio, and still whipping up new stuff and experimenting more,” she says. “My goal is to continue to be able to do this work for myself and amp up this ferocity that I’ve been on the path of.”