SOJOURNER TRUTH PARSONS
I
n an era when identity politics are so prevalent, specifically in
the U.S., it’s easy to trivialize the travails of our neighbors to the north. Imagine the journey of a Black-Mi'kmaq-Caucasian Canadian painter born to an absentee father and a single mother who enlisted a craft-crazed grandmother to watch her child while she earned a living as a graphic designer for a television station in Victoria, British Columbia. “My nana was a knitter. She made crazy shit around me all
the time, blankets and sweaters and hats with so many colors and patterns, but I felt really strange growing up,” says Sojourner Truth Parsons. Her name was picked out by her mother who was visiting a Judy Chicago exhibit in 1984 when baby Sojourner kicked as she was passing a reference to the 19th century abolitionist and activist. Though she wanted to “be a star” as a child, Truth Parsons’
younger sister—now a professional dancer and choreographer—proved the more talented performer. “I would always draw out the things I wanted to be,” she explains of her early sketches of legs doing splits or turns. “I just pull from my life. My dad wasn’t around much when I was growing up so I had all these watercolors of this black man. It’s always been an expression of a personal journey.” After graduating from the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design and burning through a few Canadian galleries, Truth Parsons’ journey ultimately led her to a residency at New Mexico’s Santa Fe Art Institute in 2014, where she used sand, acrylic and ceramic to make collaged canvases with warm colors and pink poodles to tackle notions of rejection and shame. That year she also connected with Davida Nemeroff and Mieke Marple, the founders of Los Angeles’ Night Gallery, who invited Truth Parsons to show these works in “Hot House,” their 2014 pop-up show in Harlem during New York’s Frieze Week. A year
later, she ducked out to Mexico City “to get away for a bit,” but Nemeroff encouraged her to come back to the States and check out L.A. for a few months in order to make a new body of work. “When I first got here, I was out at the Beverly Hills Hotel
and the Chateau Marmont and I was really overwhelmed. I’m sober so I’d just be talking to these beautiful lips, mouths and cigarettes. That’s what was coming at me, these glamorous, weird experiences,” says Truth Parsons over a kombucha in her new light-and-flower-filled loft studio overlooking Downtown L.A. Evoking the single point perspectives of Matisse interiors, Tom Wesselmann’s early Pop Art icons, the sex appeal of Patrick Nagel posters and the dark beauty of Hollywood glitz, her sand-covered acrylic collages and canvases were an instant hit with collectors and earned Truth Parsons shows this year at New York’s Tomorrow Gallery and Night, where she will make her solo debut September 16. While she could easily forge a factory from her recent works, Truth Parsons lives by the Rosemarie Trockel adage: “The minute something works, it ceases to be interesting. As soon as you have spelled something out, you should set it aside.” “I don’t think the world needs more objects. You don’t need
my painting in that way. What I can offer is my feelings and emotions towards the world,” she says. “I’m looking at art through my heart. Maybe that’s selfish, but I want to find something I didn’t know was there.” While this “selfishness” led her to painting scenes of
women looking away from the viewer for Tomorrow—reflecting her retreat from the Hollywood fast life into a more domestic existence in Pasadena—Truth Parsons is showing an entirely new body of work at Night about “women, women, women and the sun,” she says. “I want to find the painting, I don’t want to make it. It’s so much about vibes.”
PORTRAIT BY STEVEN PERILLOUX 186
culturedmag.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242 |
Page 243 |
Page 244
