The lumber room is honored to present a solo exhibition by the Brooklyn-based photographer Nona Faustine. Spanning a decade-long career, Faustine’s work explores the perseverance and strength of Black life. She is most widely known for her groundbreaking series White Shoes (2012-2021), a collection of self-portraits taken at historical sites marking New York City's 300-year involvement in the chattel slave trade. Most often wearing nothing but white-heeled pumps, Faustine confronts these landmarks with unwavering resolve, seeking to unveil and challenge the obscured histories woven within them. For this exhibition, lumber room is presenting selections from White Shoes alongside a newly-acquired portfolio of Faustine’s ongoing series Mitochondria. This more intimate collection of images portrays Faustine's domestic life as a mother, sister, and daughter, encapsulating the profound love and resilience nurtured within these familial roles. Simultaneously, it reinforces the artist's unique perspective, one guided by critical investigation, self preservation, and ultimately— liberation.
A Conversation with Nona Faustine - Thursday February 22nd 7pm-
public event - free, no registration required
The title Mitochondria, refers to the mitochondrial DNA encoded in human genes, which is inherited solely from the mother. The work unfolds as a series of snapshots portraying the artist's life intertwined with her sister Channon, their late mother Queen Elizabeth Simmons, and her daughter Queen Ming. When showcased as a whole, the series becomes a tribute to an intergenerational lineage of women and the inherent care that defines it. Like all of Faustine’s work, these images are steeped in historical research and symbolism. With them, she pays homage to her father's passion for photography and the family albums he meticulously crafted during her childhood. They also subtly reference Lyndon B. Johnson's 1965 Moynihan Report, which stereotyped and politicized Black American family dynamics. Art historian and cultural critic Maurice Berger has observed that the series is also informed by “photographer Marilyn Nance’s explorations of spirituality and faith in the African-American community, Sally Mann’s controversial photographs of her children, Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes’s epochal 1955 photo essay about Harlem, ‘The Sweet Flypaper of Life,’ and Rita Dove’s poems about motherhood and family.”
The artist states: “I wanted to show the quiet, normal moments of this family of African-American women: our everyday life, our happy moments, our down moments, Mitochondria is a family album, a visual diary of our intimate lives. I felt passionate about showing this because you rarely see these moments in mainstream media or museum or gallery exhibitions. We are like everyone else. And that’s what I wanted to share.”
Surrounding this series are seven large prints of selected works from White Shoes, on loan from the artist and her gallery Higher Pictures. This work reveals uncomfortable truths and points to the incomplete histories of people whose contribution to this nation’s wealth have yet to be adequately accounted for — or respectfully memorialized. When shown side by side, these two series give context to both the interior and exterior life of a working artist and her determination to bring her family with her in her fight for accurate historical representation and overdue reparation.
“Faustine makes her naked body a witnessing body, a transgressive body, a heroic body, a potent body,” art critic Seph Rodney writes in the book White Shoes, (London, Mac, 2021). “And in all these ways she demonstrates to her viewers that one’s body, in all its aspects, must be one’s own, or indeed all is lost.”
About the artist:
Nona Faustine was born and raised in Brooklyn, where she lives and works. Faustine earned her MFA from Bard College in 2013 and holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts. Recent group exhibitions include Fantasy America (2021) at the Andy Warhol Museum; MONUMENTS NOW (2020) at Socrates Sculpture Park and Half The Picture: A Feminist Look At The Collection (2018) at the Brooklyn Museum. In 2019, Faustine received a New York State Council for the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Colene Brown Art Prize, and the Anonymous Was A Woman grant. In 2020, she participated in the inaugural class of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal Residency.
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