San Antonio
Whitfield Lovell’s work defies easy categorization. He is perhaps best known for his realistic Conté crayon portrait drawings, sourced from found vintage photographs of anonymous African Americans spanning the period from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Movement. But his works, often rendered on textured, wooden surfaces, are also sculptural and immersive, sometimes invoking all the senses. “Passages,” a visually and conceptually lavish survey exhibition (on view through January 19, 2025), features several large bodies of work, including two multimedia installations—Deep River and Visitation: the Richmond Project.
Deep River evokes the Civil War-era Camp Contraband, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Today, only an unassuming historical marker informs visitors to the site (now a park) that it was once the location of a vibrant community of more than 5,000 freedmen and escaped slaves whose labor created much of the city’s infrastructure. In Lovell’s work, viewers enter a darkened gallery, where they encounter a spiral of 56 vertically oriented, circular wooden foundry molds of various sizes. Each one bears the true-to-life portrait of an African American individual whose identity has been forgotten. Some are from the 19th century, while others are more contemporary. In the center of the room, a large, fragrant mound of earth is strewn with personal effects suggestive of the artifacts carried and left behind by people inhabiting transitional, liminal spaces. Large video images of moving water cover the walls of the space, an oblique reference to the Tennessee River, as well as to borders and crossings more broadly. In San Antonio, a few hours’ drive from the U.S./Mexico border, the installation carries particular resonance and speaks universally to migratory crossings and passages.
Visitation: The Richmond Project pays tribute to the African American community of Jackson Ward, on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. An exquisitely rendered mural-sized tableau, in Conté crayon on wood, suggests some of the individuals who inhabited this community. Boxes of Lincoln pennies on the floor reference Jackson Ward’s St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, the first bank to be founded by an African American, and the first bank to be founded by a woman. The bank provided Black-owned businesses with an avenue to success, despite Richmond’s oppressively discriminatory practices.
A partial full-scale representation of the interior of a dwelling from the settlement makes the project fully immersive. Entering the convincingly furnished parlor/dining room transports visitors back in time. Newspapers are stacked on a piano bench, a stack of letters waits to be opened, the table is set for supper, and a radio plays quiet, period music. Drawings of a smartly dressed man and woman on the walls of the room suggest the inhabitants of this intimate space. You feel as if you’re in the presence of ghosts.
The Reds (2021–22) is the most recent body of work on view. Framed in shadowboxes, these drawings of Black individuals rendered on vibrant red paper form a visually striking ensemble. Though the series is illustrative rather than sculptural, the drawings are presented alongside a red rotary telephone that allows visitors to listen to the Black National Anthem; composed in 1900, the hymn’s lyrics speak to adversity, optimism, and triumphant resilience.
This is a large suite of gallery spaces, and Lovell fills it comfortably with fastidiously rendered drawings that push out into three dimensions. His work is at once visual, auditory, and even olfactory. “Passages” makes the point that there is a space for classically executed figurative art in the 21st century. Though rooted in history, the exhibition (and Lovell’s work more generally) resonates with contemporary events.
