Jahi Kijo Lendor
Hymns from Beyond the Buttermilk
December 21, 2023 – January 27, 2024
Opening Reception Thursday December 21, 6-8pm
Installation Views
Microscope is very pleased to present “Hymns from Beyond the Buttermilk,” the first solo exhibition of works by artist Jahi Kijo Lendor. With a “fluidity between media” such as painting, assemblage, sculpture, moving image, and installation, the works on view by the Brooklyn-born Black/Dominican American artist similarly addresses multiple themes of “culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure” often within a single work.
“… My work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. “ — JKL
Lendor’s medium-to-large scale installations are constructed with what the artist refers to as “humble materials,” objects or fragments thereof that he has had in his possession and cared for over time after collecting them from curbs, thrift shops, ebay and other sources. Some appear in the works without alterations, while others have been painted, drawn on, or otherwise augmented by the 2023 RISD MFA Painting graduate. Lendor’s detailed interventions amplify the “lived” nature and aesthetics of his materials.
Games and sports are recurrent motifs of the installations on view through which Lendor plays upon the symbolism of items such as a baseball bat or a lottery ticket, drawing attention to the disparate meanings that are conveyed depending upon one’s race, class, and lived experiences.
In “dorothy freestyle pt. 2” a hopscotch board, which starts on the gallery floor, leads to and merges into the wall components of the work. While the initial squares are created in outline — like those drawn by children on the asphalt streets and sidewalks — subsequent grids are represented by clothing catalog pages, the first several of which are for white live matters apparel. Among the other elements in this highly nuanced piece are upside down GAP shopping bags, prayer candles, empty liquor bottles, a bouquet of plastic flowers, and black painted circles in the form of a partially concealed target.
Lyrics and language are also critical elements of Lendor’s work. The title of the installation “whitey on the moon, diamonds on my neck, diamonds on my grill” references, among others, the Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 poem criticizing the use of public funds for an expedition to the moon. And, a projected video component of the work superimposes, among others, the closing freestyle-rap scene from the 2018 movie “Blindspotting” with footage of a window behind a flickering fan, with the latter having a physical counterpart operating in the installation.
The prevalence of arched shapes — such as the pink party streamers in “whitey on the moon…,” mentioned above; the pool noodles that end inside “Timbalands” and Jordans in “dont call it jazz, continuation of the coolest”; and the curved rows of cutout stars in “this isnt the end, just a semi-colon” — together seem to assert that the path forward is hardly ever linear.
Hymns from Beyond the Buttermilk opens on December 21 and continues through January 27, 2024. Opening Reception: Thursday December 21, 6-8pm. For further inquiries or further information please contact the gallery at inquiries@microscopegallery.com
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Jahi Kijo Lendor (b.1991, Brooklyn, NY) is a Black-Dominican American, NY/NJ-based artist whose work focuses on reflecting on how he sees life and his environment, which translates to a multi-melaninated reality of the Black experience. His work has been exhibited in “Black Biennial” at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI and at the RISD MFA Painting show “Rota Fortunae” at Field Projects in New York, among others. Lendor graduated with a BFA and a BA from Rutgers University, New Jersey in 2019. He was a Society of Presidential Fellows recipient at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, RI, where he received his MFA in Painting in 2023.
