CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio – The moving figures in a dark but starry night sky in Antwoine Washington’s painting ‘Parade for Harriet’ (2022) got me thinking about the complexity, instability and politics of the House. Featured in Come Home with Me: A Solo Exhibition by Antwoine Washington at Gallery 2602, a new alternative art space in Cleveland Heights, “Parade for Harriet”—with its stark contrasts of dark and light—seems to emphasize the widespread effects and long duration of slavery. The title of the work, along with its female figure riding a panther, with a gun at her waist, and the accompanying group of people walking alongside her, evoke memories of the fierce abolitionist Harriet Tubman. To me, their contemporary attire communicates that the quest for freedom is a continuous and perilous journey. Seeing the wispy clouds and spheres of golden light in the painting during the exhibition’s opening weekend, just as the smoke from the Canadian wildfires had left this region, reminded me of the various effects relentless racial capitalism and settler colonialism. Visiting come home with meI have witnessed black epistemologies/knowledge systems that demonstrate ways of living despite the constant threats of displacement and precariousness.
Gallery founders Deidre McPherson and Thea Spittle, who co-curated the exhibition with the artist, drew on their professional museum backgrounds for the hybrid space while realizing their goal of making art more accessible . They have made their house a gallery. Washington, who has exhibited paintings and mixed-media works in various institutional art spaces and painted public murals throughout Cleveland, shares the gallery owners’ innovative spirit. He co-founded the Creative Human Art Museum, a traveling initiative that exhibits artwork in venues such as community art centers, small businesses and museums across the city and offers art classes for young people. With this in mind, the three took a mixed approach to their joint venture. Upon entering Gallery 2602, guests are greeted by an introductory text on the wall. But taking a few more steps inside, the furniture and the cat, Meeko, make it clear that come home with me is actually a home – a familiar and affirmed experience of life. The home, despite the strongly promoted idea that art occurs primarily in spaces of white cubes, is for many people the first site of aesthetic learning, practice and appreciation, where children draw, play, cook, sing and engage in other inventive activities.
As I moved through the rooms I felt a synergy. In come home with me, a true collaboration from the start, Washington, McPherson and Spittle have combined their commitments to nurture anti-racist art, community and practice. Together with the gallery and the exhibition, they fulfill the desire that many of us have to share art with each other in a place where we can breathe fully and work with dignity, rather than being constrained by institutional forces to tolerate anti-Blackness as a condition of inclusion.
Immediately, the exhibition’s unity of representation, practice, and setting reminded me of black feminist scholar bell hooks’ discussion of vernacular curatorial practices of black families. In The Art in My Head: Visual Politics (1995), she notes that “[t]he video walls in black homes in the South were places of resistance. They were a private gallery space, owned and operated by black people, where images could be exhibited, shown to friends and strangers. Similarly, on the walls of Gallery 2602, Washington expresses black freedom struggles through ancestral memory. In addition to the main figures, traces of his lineage appear in some paintings as gold leaf silhouettes resembling apparitions – a type of conceptual pentimenti. In a way that is both friendly and critical, the exhibition opposes the myth of black families as dysfunctional that is regularly propagated in corporate news. Works such as “472 Valencia” (2022) and “A Burning Love” (2022) present resonant images of parents comforting each other, coming together and reflecting on their bonds.
come home with me also depicts particularly pensive moments. For example, alluding to Sam Greenlee’s 1960s novel The ghost that sat by the door — about a black CIA agent who switches allegiance when he leaves the government to train black insurgents in the techniques of warfare — the dark tone of Washington’s painting “The Spook” (2023) demands meticulous attention. Displayed near a window, the painting’s depiction of an open door and a pillar behind the backlit figure resonates with the domestic setting of Gallery 2602. For me, this eerie effect injects a sense of anxiety undeniable in the exhibit, as unequal access to power remains a lingering feature for black communities.
In his self-portrait, “The War Within” (2023), Washington seems to indicate that knowing and honoring both the past and the present involves difficult devotion. At the center of the composition, the artist represents himself at different stages of his life surrounded by positive and negative spirits. Being home and finding solace within involves courage, arduous exploration, and inspiration. In some ways reminiscent of “Parade for Harriet”, this composite image, with its dark but shimmering clouds, draws viewers into a haunting, internalized, memory-laden odyssey.
By highlighting the relationship between the personal and the collective, come home with me emphasizes interdependence. Supported by the Satellite Fund, administered by SPACES and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Regional Visual Arts Grants Program; FutureHeights Mini-Grants Program; and donations from friends and family, the exhibit also encouraged me to consider institutional homes for art. This demonstrates that patrons can find ways to support artistic and cultural initiatives grounded in concern for black people. The common rationalization in the art world is that we must wait for hegemonic institutions to correct themselves, even if they have long-standing histories and ongoing practices of exclusion and harm to black people and other marginalized people. On the other hand, come home with me and like-minded counter-hegemonic projects show that other trajectories for creating and funding aesthetic experiences exist – and will proliferate if funding is provided for these pathways. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted long ago, “we can’t wait.”
come home with me is an invitation to recover with others who understand the importance of having safe havens from the intensified anti-blackness assaults we find through state-sanctioned killings of black people, laws banning teaching of our stories, the decimation of reproductive rights, the destruction of the environment, and other brutal acts. By manifesting connections, this exhibit recognizes and expands on the traditions that have sustained Black lives amid the catastrophe of racial capitalism and its growing devastation. This refuge offers us moments to recharge our batteries and breathe together.
Come Home with Me: A Solo Exhibition by Antwoine Washington continues at Gallery 2602 (2602 Hampshire Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio) through July 30. The exhibition was curated by Deidre McPherson, Thea Spittle and Antwoine Washington.
