Esteban Jefferson’s exhibition at 303 Gallery is a powerful depiction of the aftermath of the protests against police brutality and racial injustice in reaction to the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Jefferson’s work is a series of oil and graphite paintings that portray colonialist monuments as ghostly figures altered by eye-catching, realistic, and highly rendered protest graffiti and flags, allowing these symbols of protest to replace the monuments. The paintings are also accompanied by a series of photographs depicting a New York Police Department van from various angles at night and a 13 minute long video on a small television playing a New York Landmarks Preservation Committee Zoom meeting and the sound from this video echoes throughout the gallery.
The motifs in his paintings memorialize important acts of protest that will be remembered forever. There is a somewhat unfinished quality to the work as the scenery is depicted only with a subtle trace of graphite and a soft almost watercolor-like wash of oil paint. This quality further pushes the idea of the environment being unstable and obscure as many Black and Indigenous people of color may feel this way about living in an environment that privileges white people. The quality of the background being incomplete in the paintings could also represent the fact that we are not finished fighting for racial equality and that the United States is still a work in progress in this regard.
You did a really great job summarizing the show and I feel like you really touched upon all the important aspects that make this show so interesting. There is a clear statement being shown in this gallery through the use of his repetitions. If anything I think you could possibly touch more on the emphasis Jefferson places on these paintings. It might also be good to separate your thoughts into multiple paragraphs. Even with a smaller word limit people tend not to want to read large bodies of text, I think if you break it up it will be more inviting for readers.
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