The work of four Black female artists is showing at the ICA this spring

To walk into a room filled with the work of artist Tomashi Jackson is to see, first off, the urgency of the work. The beauty, the bold strokes of color and texture, the art expanding the boundaries of the frame, the layering and depth. How do you take it all in?

Jackson’s stunning art is collected this spring at Penn’s Institute of Contemporary Art in what is the first mid-career survey of the artist’s works, entitled “Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe.”

Behind every painting is a research-based process and a gathering of materials, some valued for their tactile and aesthetic qualities, others for their historical significance. Jackson’s Still Remains, for example, uses charcoal, gouache, Georgia red clay on postal congressional election fliers, and brown paper bags.

“I don’t have to know what it’s going to look like,” Jackson said during a preview of her exhibit, which brings together more than 30 works with her signature color and layering, speaking to topics of social justice, voting rights, and oppression of Black and Indigenous people throughout U.S. history.

“I don’t have to control the aesthetic outcome of the image,” Jackson said. “But if I do the research work, what comes out, I’ll just be able to trust it.”

She recalled going to England and being taken to the edge of the coasts, where there are pits and quarries. “The history of English stoneware is on that coast.”

“And the history, the first ships that left with wool to trade for wine, to trade for people,” she said. “So now I know I can go to a place and seek out earth and material. What is the landscape? What is the role of architecture? It’s all of this. Generally all these spaces have some sort of tension around who gets to be free and who doesn’t get to be free.”

Another work, I see Fields of Green (Put the Ball Through the Hoop), from 2022, is comprised of acrylic, Yule Quarry Marble dust, and paper bags on canvas with PVC marine vinyl mounted on a handcrafted wood awning structure with brass hooks and grommets.

Upstairs is the “Sargasso Sea” exhibit, a tactile collection of provoking sculpture and multimedia that explores the “dualities of the sea’s transformative powers, as a site that disrupted colonial voyages as well as a metaphorical place of regeneration.”

The Sargasso Sea, north of the Caribbean, is the only body of water defined by oceanic currents rather than shorelines. This is another exhibit with sharp intellectual underpinnings, with the two artists, Dominique White and Alberta Whittle, contemplating Black feminist theory and the transatlantic slave trade.

Like Jackson, the artists use natural and man-made materials. A large scale work, Can We Be Known Without Being Hunted, features giant rusted and bent-iron harpoons entangled with rope and twine suspended from the ceiling.

Meanwhile, the ICA’s facade has been transformed by artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti into a 2,000-square-foot work incorporating patterns of ironwork and African hair-braiding designs. It is on view through December and visible from the outside and inside. It is the first in a planned series of commissions to activate the facade on North 36th Street.

Mutiti’s pattern incorporates braids with decorative architectural features first created by enslaved blacksmiths from West Africa. A series of gold barrettes are arranged throughout the pattern. The installation is in partnership with Maharam, a creator of textiles.

“Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe” and “Sargasso Sea” are on view through June 2. Nontsikelelo Mutiti’s “Entryways” is on view through December. Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 118 S. 36th St., Philadelphia