Writer’s Preface
Susan Isaacs visits Rozeal.’s exhibition at the Biggs Museum of American Art and discusses it with her in a recent Zoom conversation. Isaacs first met Rozeal. when she curated an exhibition of Rozeal.’s work on view at the Asian Arts and Culture Gallery, Towson University in the spring of 2012.* The current exhibition at the Biggs, curated by Laura Fravel, includes works created between 2002 and 2024. Rozeal. is an interdisciplinary artist who not only makes paintings and drawings but who also created a complex performance work, “the battle of yestermore,” which Isaacs was lucky enough to see live at Performa in 2011. Visitors to this new exhibition in Dover can view both a recording of the “battle of yestermore” and three of the original costumes Rozeal. designed for it. Isaacs concentrates in this article on several of the artist’s more recent works on display at the Biggs.
Rozeal.** presents complex iconographies in her images. A Black artist and DJ, she grew up in the Washington DC area and as a youngster became intrigued by Japanese visual and performing culture. Her first Japanese sources included those from cartoons, such as Kimba and Marine Boy, and the manga and tokusatsu series Johnny Sacco and the Flying Robot and the manga comic Speed Racer. She developed a fascination with Asian-style theater too, attending Kabuki and Bunraku performances with her mother. In 2000, she began to look closely at Japanese Ukiyo-e prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Edo period, which took as their subjects the theater and courtesan quarters of Edo (modern Tokyo). She particularly admired the artist, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Later Rozeal. became interested in Japan again when learning there were young people there emulating blackface as well as the hip hop culture of the United States.*** She visited Asia several times, including one six-month stay in Japan in 2005.
Over the years, Rozeal. developed a complex narrative that involves spirit figures, heroines, and demons and many of the works in the show demonstrate this. She not only looks for inspiration to historical Japanese prints and traditional Japanese theater, but also to music, contemporary Black culture, African folk stories, the science fiction of Octavia Butler, and the fantasy literature of J. R. Tolkien. She admires such disparate artists as Leonardo da Vinci and Mark Rothko. Utilizing the processes of self-sampling and remixing found in the music industry, Rozeal. explores afro-asiatic allegory, producing dramatic images that address issues of race, gender, and class. Rozeal. is at heart a storyteller.
Trained as a painter, she is a lover of materials and mostly employs acrylic paint. She also includes collage elements, especially in the more recent paintings where she draws from her extensive decorative paper collection. Rozeal. enjoys painting on wood panels commenting, “I love all the patterns of the wood. If I see an area that I really like, I will try to see if I can keep the wood exposed, or at least not cover it completely. . . Sometimes there are layers of transparency. Not all paint is opaque.” She enjoys depicting people. Another characteristic, especially of her more recent work, is her incorporation of text, which frequently appears as a fragment or is distorted in some way. Her work is large scale, usually 4 x 5 ft. or 5 x 6 ft., which provides room for her layered content and complex compositions. She also enjoys utilizing cardboard as a substrate.
For instance, “From “The Glut Sinage Series”: To Paraphrase “Biz is Goin’ Off” I …Need to Let That Man Go. Uh, 1, 2, 1, 2.” (2023) began as a sign for mangos she created from cardboard packing when she was co-managing a food coop, explaining: “Every now and then I find some humor in something, and I put it into the title. There’s a Biz Markie song where he says, ‘I am the magnificent,’ and then he comes in with his beatbox, and he goes ‘a 1, 2, a 1, 2.’ So, with this particular piece, when I was first doing the study, I think I might have had a crush on somebody, and it wasn’t reciprocated. And I was like, I just need to let this man go.”
Two works in the show present narratives inspired by Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone, a Black inventor, businesswoman, and philanthropist who made her fortune creating different hair-care products for African American women. She founded a cosmetology school, Poro College. Madam C.J. Walker enrolled at Malone’s Poro College and later became a Poro agent before going off on her own, also becoming very successful.*** Rozeal. began these paintings thinking of presenting the narrative through the vision of Walker but ultimately decided that she wanted to go back to the person who she considers the originator of hair products for Black women, Malone.
“Ms. Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone’s Gathering of Former Rude Gyals: Strange Gods, Jezebels, Exorcism (2023),” has upside down text in the background – a distorted version of the word “slut,” a reference derogatively used by a male acquaintance of Rozeal.’s that led her to think about the meaning of the word. She explains that originally the word referred to a dirty or slovenly person but eventually became associated with women of loose character. In keeping with Rozeal.’s affinity for narrative, she explains: “I was just kind of envisioning a single woman who for whatever reason–maybe her man left, maybe she’s a widow, who knows? She’s trying to maintain a household, and maybe there’s a fella—and this is all in my head—right? So maybe there’s a fellow that’s a sailor, and he comes through town periodically, and maybe he stays with her so he can get a warm bed and home cooked meal. He likes her kids and gives her some money. And maybe there’s more than one guy like that in her life, and I’m not encouraging that type of behavior, but I felt like once I got the understanding of what the original definition of what slut meant, I began to sort of feel a little bit more empathy about it. And this was right before Amber Rose started her anti-slut shaming movement, which I also felt like I understood. I didn’t read too deeply into it, but I felt like I understood what she may have been trying to get across.”
The painting presents a female figure with what seems to be fur and necklace. Rozeal. has an affinity for accessories in her paintings. She paints with thin layers. Different from her earlier images of women, here the figure is sensuous but not naked. Her clothing and accessories tone down or cover any overt physical exposures, such as breasts. Some of the change in her more recent works can be attributed to Rozeal’s growing involvement with a conservative Christian church, but she also became interested in general in the topic of modest dress. This piqued her interest in the Muslim faith as well, leading to her purchase of an Abaya, allowing her to dress in a way that is both physically and spiritually comfortable.
Rozeal. speaks to many of the same subjects in her recent works as those made in the past, but with a more layered approach, both visually and conceptually. The paintings display an integrated vision of the East and West. While they remain figurative, they are simultaneously abstract. Her affinity for pattern contributes to their complex compositions. Often tensions exist. Rozeal. balances different cultures, abstraction and figuration, text and image, and specific and dense narratives.
One other work in the Biggs exhibition refers to Annie Minerva Tubo Malone – “Ms. Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone’s Gathering of Former Rude Gyals: “;;I.N.G.O.T.G.!!”-Taraji P. Henson” (2024). Again, Rozeal. presents a multilayered work and a complex narrative. This painting began years ago and remained in a sketch form until more recently.The figure had a lot of exposed skin in the beginning, but more recently Rozeal. decided to cover the body with patterns, eliminating any nudity. In this pose, she changed the hands, turning them inward, a position she has used in other works. She wanted the figure to be more focused on self-love. Spirituality imbues much of Rozeal.’s work, here exemplified by the blue hands and the woman turning away, looking downward.
Rozeal. explains the title of the work even further, saying: “When Kevin Hart first started out, he and his closest friends used to do a lot of these little film shorts that were so funny, and in this one, he and his cohort were planning on robbing a bank. There were all kinds of references to other bank robbing movies in this film. So, he gets to the bank and Taraji P. Henderson is one of the tellers. Kevin has this huge gun and he’s yelling at all the people telling them to get on the ground. Taraji. You know her hair is perfect, and she’s got this gorgeous suit on, and he says, get on the ground, and she says I’m not getting on the ground. And he yells again. She says I’m not getting on the ground, and it was so funny because, you know, he’s the one with the gun, and she’s like, I don’t care. I’m not getting on the ground. But there was also something poignant for me about it where I have, as many humans have, felt beat up, where I was being forced, or at least an attempt was being made to force me to buckle or do something that I didn’t want to do, or just plain old out and out disrespect. And while I was working on this piece, I remember hearing that Taraji had been cast in the movie musical, The Color Purple. And the word on the street was that she had had a tough go of it. . .It really bothered me a lot.”
Another theme in Rozeal.’s work is that of couples. She began a series on the topic some years ago, which is now titled “Redeem the Time.” It is a quote from her godfather who, she explains, is a widower and feels inclined to tell couples to redeem the time. Rozeal. explains that he really misses his wife terribly; they had a “sweet relationship.” She began to look at Shunga again—multicolored erotic images of the Japanese Ukiyo-e school from the 17th—19th centuries.***** She saw a connection between rap music and the sexuality of Shunga works. She was also thinking about how young people in Japan were darkening their skin to emulate Black popular culture.
When she revisited this theme more recently, she was again looking at the artist Utamaro, who, while considered Shunga, made woodblock prints that were erotic but usually not explicit. Rozeal decided to investigate the closeness of a couple without it being “raunchy.” She emphatically states that she did not want to depict any more penises! She describes “Redeem The Time! Couples” (2022) saying: “I wanted to try to find an opportunity to highlight what I was interested in, which was not only couples, but just intimacy, be it in the eyes or a touch like the way she’s got her hands in his hair. For me the most important part was really their eyes looking at each other.” The piece is elegant, intimate, and emotive and also addresses the duality of couples.
“REDEEM THE TIME! – New Wave, New York” (2024) is another mixed media couples work. Rozeal. asks, “How do you find a relationship in NYC? . . . This is a chaotic painting because I was in New York for both (Hurricane) Sandy and Irene. I had a couple of maps in New York in my paper collection and Basquiat has this really groovy yellow painting that says ‘New York, New Wave,’ and I just inverted it [the text] and made it ‘New Wave, New York.’ The waves are crashing all the way around the cutout Speaker constructions. I went to walk the dog the next day, and the water was at the end of my block . . .It was very unsettling, to say the least. . . . Then there’s these little heads all around shouting out different things like New York,’ and they’re kind of topsy turvy and all upside down. New York is just a crazy place!”******
There are many more terrific works in the exhibition. Rozeal. is a committed artist who has created a body of work that crosses disciplines. She is working on a graphic novel and developing merch connected to her paintings.
NOTES
*The exhibition, which was reviewed in BmoreArt , presents a number of images of the TU show including a large mural created on site. https://bmoreart.com/2012/03/new-urbanite-ezine-feature-afro-asiatic.html
** Formerly known as Iona Rozeal Brown, Rozeal. holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University. She also has a background in music and set up as a DJ after graduate school. She is represented by Keyes Hardware Gallery in Tribeca, New York City.
***See a lecture by Rozeal for the Center for the Arts at George Mason University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9vhiXhtSXU
**** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Turnbo_Malone and https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/annie-malone-and-madam-cj-walker-pioneers-african-american-beauty-industry
***** “Shunga” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunga
******Rozeal. left NYC after seven years, returning to her native Maryland where she both lives and has her studio.
Rozeal.: Want Not (Rescue from the Otherwise Obscene, Salvation from the Wicked), Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware, OCTOBER 3 – MARCH 2, 2025. Note: The museum is now free for all.
Read more Susan Isaacs articles on Artblog.
