Janiva Ellis’ “Fair Enough” is part of the “Fear Corroded Ape” exhibit in Harvard Square, Cambridge. (Image: Carpenter Center)
The paintings in Janiva Ellis’ solo exhibition, “Fear Corroded Ape,” look like how the past two weeks have felt: inconclusive yet ominous, a picture of modern ruin.
Haunting and captivating, the show opened Friday at Harvard’s Carpenter Center. Its starting point is the idea of an “unresolvable” painting, or a work that feels nearly impossible to finish; every piece on view sat in Ellis’ studio for years.
She returned to them from time to time, working piecemeal as a half-decade of sociopolitical turmoil transpired. There is still an unfinished quality to them. The resulting pieces are the definition of inchoate.
Ellis uses a blend of landscape and abstractions in her compositions, conjuring bodies and cartoons seemingly out of smoke. Many of her figures are half-filled, an effect made all the more ominous with a gray color palette.
Previously, Ellis has repurposed old paintings – some her own and some she finds – and riffed off of the composition underneath as she paints on top of it.
Though she’s moved away from that technique, the influence is still clear in her new work: In “Fair Enough,” unsettling expressions rise up from the painting’s four subjects. A white woman smiles vaguely, holding the shoe of a Black woman behind her. What’s happening in the image is unclear, but there is a sense of malice.
Curator Dan Byers told Harvard Magazine that Ellis’ rise since 2017 was due in part to a “rapacious market for work by black artists working in the figurative manner,” which was overdue recognition but ultimately contributed to artists’ feelings of tokenization.
Given the Trump administration’s efforts to kill diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, that sentiment feels timely in a different way.
“Fear Corroded Ape” through April 6 at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. Free.
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