Flint, MI—MW Gallery is welcoming contemporary photographer Ayana V. Jackson for an Artist Talk on June 28, 2025. In this program, Jackson will share her experiences and inspirations as an artist, as well as the themes and subject matters she explores in her artworks.
Ayana V. Jackson (b. 1977 in East Orange, New Jersey; lives and works between Brooklyn, NY and Johannesburg, South Africa) uses archival impulses to assess the impact of the colonial gaze on the history of photography. By using her lens to deconstruct 19th and early 20th century portraiture, Jackson questions photography’s authenticity and role in perpetuating socially relevant and stratified identities.
Jackson’s practice maps the ethical considerations and relationships between the photographer, subject, and viewer, in turn exploring themes around race, gender and reproduction. Her work examines myths of the Black diaspora and re-stages colonial archival images as a means to liberate the Black body. The various titles of her series nod to the stories she is reimagining. Jackson often casts herself in the role of historical figures to guide their narrative and directly access the impact of photography and its relationship to the human body.
Jackson’s work is collected by major local and international institutions including The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, New York), The Newark Museum (Newark, New Jersey), J. P. Morgan Chase Art Collection (New York, New York), Princeton University Art Museum (Prince-ton, New Jersey), The National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia), The Museum of Con-temporary Photography (Chicago, Illinois) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Seattle, Washington). Jackson was a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow for Photography and the recipient of the 2018 Smithsonian Fellowship.
In 2022, Jackson founded Still Art, an artist residency program focused on emerging Southern African contemporary artists of all disciplines in Johannesburg. From the Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya, her first major institutional exhibition at the National Museum of African Art – Smithsonian Institution, opened in April 2023.
This program is presented in conjunction with MW Gallery’s exhibition “Figuratively Speaking,” on view February 14 through August 23, 2025, which features two artworks by Ayana V. Jackson. This exhibit, drawn from the Mott-Warsh Collection, highlights artists’ use of the human form to communicate identity, social commentary and shared emotions and experiences. Relying on body language, gestures and facial expressions, these artists convey narratives that are fully realized and others with endings to be completed by the viewer.
Artist Talk: Ayana V. Jackson will take place on Saturday, June 28, 2025, 2:00pm at MW Gallery, located at 815 S. Saginaw St., Flint, MI 48502. Gallery entrance is on E. Court St. This event is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Thursdays and Fridays 11:00am – 6:00pm; Saturdays 11:00am – 5:00pm; and the 2nd Friday of each month 11:00am – 9:00pm for Flint ARTWALK.
Please call (810) 835-4900 or visit http://www.m-wc.org for more information.
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About MW Gallery and the Mott Warsh CollectionMW Gallery is the permanent home of the Mott-Warsh Collection (MWC)—a privately owned, publicly shared fine artcollection that comprises over 1100 works by artists of the African diaspora and those who reflect on it. The galleryfeatures expansive exhibitions drawn from the collection and facilitates community engagement with art through itsprograms.The MWC was established by Maryanne Mott and her late husband Herman Warsh in 2001. Their primary intent was tobring art into non-traditional venues where it could be encountered by people as they went about their daily lives. Theyformed community partnerships with institutions that had an interest in making the collection visible to theirmemberships, clients, visitors, and participants. Today, rotating exhibits of MWC artworks can be found in the publiclibrary, churches, health clinics, colleges, universities, and more in the greater Flint region. The collection also lends tointernationally and nationally touring museum exhibitions.
