For These Black Artists, “Home Is Where the Art Is”

Home is found in red Solo cups on canvas, ornate wallpaper, chipped religious iconography, and overgrown backyards in Northern-Southern’s “Home Is Where the Art Is.” Co-curated by multi-hyphenates Mueni Loko Rudd, an independent curator who teaches at Huston-Tillotson University, and Keyheira Keys, an art entrepreneur known for shepherding the “We Rise” mural on East 12th, the exhibit captures heartfelt feelings of home in the work of five Black artists. Each creator draws upon Texas roots and time spent in other American cities to tell cultural and personal stories shaped by community, religion, migration, and preservation.

The arresting gaze of Adrian Armstrong’s Saint immediately pulls visitors into the gallery on Fifth. The artist’s late friend, bleary-eyed in a D.A.R.E. shirt, is rendered from memory, evoking home as a place – literal or figurative – where the past lives on. Beside him, two close-up scenes of revelry, rendered in the Austin-based artist’s combination of acrylic, ballpoint pen, colored pencil, oil pastel, and gold leaf, capture a sense of home as community. In Communion, red Solo cups are raised in cheers, and in Joyful, Joyful! women crowd around one another, clasping one another in laughter, their gold leaf rings, piercings, bracelets, and teeth glinting in the light. The religious titles suggest a feeling of divinity through togetherness.

Across the walkway, Colby Deal’s photographic subjects regard viewers with measured interest from casual poses. Leslie Abrams, a work from 2023, depicts the titular quiltmaker draped in one of her own blankets, with another hanging behind her. Abrams relocated to Houston, where Deal lives and works, after Hurricane Katrina, the adjacent placard tells us, losing many of her quilts in the process. Head cocked with a look of pride, the subject clutches heritage in her arms, and the artist extends the memory-sustaining power of pattern by placing the photograph in a carved frame further surrounded by distinct wallpaper. Fleurs-de-lis adorn the corners of the frame and delicate paintings of lilac and mint flowers in the wallpaper evoke the character-filled, ancestral homes of parents and grandparents.

JaTaiRee Hudson Jr. captures a similar familial feeling in Pallet Nights, an aerial depiction of two young boys in twin outfits and haircuts asleep on faded sheets, light still pouring in from an off-canvas window. A vibrantly colored blanket only partially covers the pair, lending the painting the stuffy yet secure feel of an early evening bedtime. One of Hudson’s other paintings finds a pair of strong hands clutching several Zulu coconuts in Struck Gold. The hand-painted fruits, one of which accompanies the oil-painted canvas, are distributed by the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a stone’s throw from the artist’s hometown of Slidell. The shells, sometimes called “Golden Nuggets,” sport Carnival colors and feathered adornments, becoming sought-after symbols of Black American cultural heritage displayed in Southern homes.

Isaac Rowry’s photography and video installation celebrates a different sort of collectible with strong symbolic resonance in Black American homes: painted figurines. Vitiligo Jesus, a roughly two-minute video, showcases many such statuettes gathered around a Messiah figure, whose chipped face resembles the pigmentation disorder. The composed figurines depict Black characters young and old, recalling the kinds of cherished collections that grow on living room shelves and mantels. In the photograph Cabinet of Comforts, a similar figurine assortment crowds a side table next to a large glass display case hosting a winged woman, standing statuesque in a dress of layered white lace. The striking image connects the objects of home to embodied personhood and illustrates the power of seeing oneself reflected in art.

The final painting in Northern-Southern’s gallery exhibition is Charles Louis Middleton III’s The Basso and The Staff, a figure in repose depicted with acrylic, graphite, and dirty paint water on rough-cut canvas. The San Antonio artist’s work makes itself at home on the gallery wall, framed by a dressing of complementary lilac paint that creates a shadowbox effect, inching onto the adjoining walls.

Each artist blends the nostalgic, ancestral feelings of home with a sense of making-it-as-you-go resilience. Faith and reverence are evident in these works that draw upon the iconography and craftsmanship of Black America throughout time to reveal how art and home are shaped by collective memory and cultural heritage and, in turn, shape contemporary artistic practices and communities.

This article appears in July 17 • 2026.