Introducing! Ra! Raw! Reclaiming! Showing reverence! Honor! Free from servitude! In service! On mission! On Divine time! Child of Shango! Deeply rooted! Rose! Rising from the concrete! Head high! Chin toward the stars! Presenting! Jungle! Jazz!
In reverence to ancient African motifs, such as hieroglyphs, as well as those who came before him, like Harlem Renaissance artist Palmer Hayden (see Nous Quatre à Paris, 1930), Rajuma Bey’s paintings salvage a lost beauty and appreciation for qualities akin to Black people and culture, qualities historically warped by oppressive intervention. Bey depicts full lips, skin as Black as berries, the interiority of jazz clubs and one’s own mind, street scenes, and various landscapes of Black life that many of us can viscerally feel and relate to. Throughout his practice, the artist showcases imagery to be seen as stoic, figures often portrayed with their gazes aimed high, roses amongst concrete jungles, all marked by a graffiti-like signature and pop-culture symbolism. In the same vein as Coltrane’s tenor– blaring, immediate, loud, when need be, and beautiful to bear witness to –Bey’s paintings are also flammable, often provocative, and richly textured with improvisational elements of mark-making. This work, containing notes of both discord and harmony, is imbued with unspoken rituals, stoop stories, and raw beauty, painted in a way that merges past, future, and this current time. The artist is insistent on the repetition of images, like the sonic language of hieroglyphics, so that we can feel the weight and visual value held, one known before colonial eyes saw and attempted to carry our beingness into a territory that isn’t ours. In his debut solo exhibition, Jungle Jazz, we are invited to appreciate complex imagery embodying contemporary forms as Bey offers his own visual re-dressing and reclamation of Black power and representation, which is and has always been rightfully ours. –Jamila Brown, artist + curator
