Gallery  February 4, 2025  Katy Diamond Hamer

Jamel Robinson’s Solo Exhibition on Grief and Survival

Courtesy Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling and the artist

Jamel Robinson, A Love Worth Fighting For, installation view.

On view at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling in Harlem, New York is A Love Worth Fighting For by artist Jamel Robinson. The exhibition brings together 14 mixed media works incorporating painting, found objects, and a video that documents his creative process. 

The film is just shy of eight minutes in length and shows the artist in the process of making a series of works on paper that come to life as he dips boxing gloves into paint and then punches the surfaces. 

Courtesy Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling and the artist

Jamel Robinson, A Love Worth Fighting For, installation view.

Accompanying the film is a song written and performed by Robinson himself. It’s a melancholic ballad, his voice cracking ever so subtly, the emotion evident with each note. Much of this work was born out of a loss that the artist experienced in his family, the gesture of punching a totality of feeling, mourning, and the survival of who is left behind. 

The role of the body in these pieces is unmistakable. Even without the film as a pedagogical tool, the work lends itself to presence and absence. It is in the absence that we are greeted. Boxing gloves that were once worn now hang from works such as “Another Fist Full of Tears” and “A Fight By Any Other Name Wouldn’t Be FREEDOM” both from 2023, tied and weighted by nails hammered on the outer and inner palm of the gloves. 

Robinson’s goal was to render the gloves useless of their intended purpose. Beyond his personal family tragedy, the artist also speaks about the Black experience, dating back to slavery. The exhibition is a glimpse into what internalized frustration looks like when it is externalized in a way that offers not only catharsis, but abstraction.

Courtesy Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling and the artist

Jamel Robinson, A Love Worth Fighting For, installation view.

Never relying solely on a brush for his application, Robinson has been using a hands-on technique since he started his art practice. And, the work on view in A Love Worth Fighting For is evident of that. 

Not only did he make marks with the boxing gloves, but he also used his hands to apply paint to various grounds, at some points scraping it away, and in others, coating layers of rice extending about an inch or two off the otherwise flat surface.

The work “An American Pastime” from 2022 utilizes a discarded police barricade and silver chain from which a pair of boxing gloves is connected. Rather than having nails on their exterior, these gloves are covered in cotton balls painted black.

The artist pays homage to Ancestors and those who were forced to pick cotton against their will. In doing so, he also shines a new light on the physical characteristics of the gloves. Divorced from their use, or perhaps made lighter, in actuality they would offer a softer blow to whoever may be on the receiving end. 

Courtesy Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling and the artist

Jamel Robinson, A Love Worth Fighting For, installation view.

The pieces that truly stand out the most are three large-scale acrylic paintings titled, “Are You Staying For Me?” / “Are You Waiting For Me?” / “Are You Praying For Me?” all from 2023. The titles are echoed in the song the artist performs in the aforementioned film where the exhibition gets its title from, “A Love Worth Fighting For” (2022). 

These works show signs of being battered by the boxing gloves dipped in black and white paint respectively. The untreated canvases are full of these blows, and where the two tonalities overlap, a grey color emerges. 

Looking at them, one is reminded of the history of abstraction and even of the works by AbEx artists, such as Jackson Pollock. Robinson is also not lost on the technique of boxing as a modality for art making. He first saw this in a documentary on Japanese artist Ushio Shinohara. 

Courtesy Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling and the artist

Jamel Robinson, A Love Worth Fighting For, installation view.

Titled Cutie and the Boxer (2013), the film follows the life of Shinohara and his partner, Noriko Shinohara, offering a candid look at their intertwined creative lives. 

Robinson admits that when he received the news of his cousin’s passing, he thought of Shinohara and the method highlighted in the film as a way to paint and heal. He adapted his own methodology as witnessed in his own short, each mark as purposeful as it is a way to channel grief and release. 

On view to the public, this body of artwork is a reflection of action and speaks to the younger generation as a source of inspiration. To echo the song lyrics and painting titles, even if one is stayingwaiting, or praying, there is a space in between, an absence that can only be filled in an unexpected way, always worth fighting for— love. 

40.830531163722, -73.941174

A Love Worth Fighting For: A solo exhibition by Jamel Robinson
Start Date:
November 6, 2024
End Date:
May 25, 2025
Venue:
Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling
About the Author

Katy Diamond Hamer

Katy Diamond Hamer is an art writer with a focus on contemporary art and culture. Writing reviews, profiles, interviews and previews, she started the online platform Eyes Towards the Dove in 2007 and was first published in print in 2011 with Flash Art International. Interview highlights include Robert Storr, Helmut Lang, Courtney Love, and Takashi Murakami. Taking a cue from art writers such as Jerry Saltz and movements such as Arte Povera (Italy, 1962-1972), Hamer believes that the language used to describe contemporary art should be both accessible to a large audience as well as informed regarding art historical references. Clients include Almine Rech, Hauser & Wirth, Grand Life, The Creative Independent, Art & Object, Artnet, Cool Hunting, BOMB, Cultured Magazine, Galerie Magazine, Flash Art International, W Magazine, New York Magazine (Vulture), The Brooklyn Rail and others.  Hamer is an Adjunct Faculty member at New York University, Steinhardt School of Education, and Sotheby's Institute of Art. Previously she taught Continuing Education at the New York School of Interior Design.

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