Love is a House that Even Death Can’t Knock Down: mk, Irene Antonia Diane Reece, and Jamie Robertson

Author’s Note

Order of Contents

“Themes of ancestor veneration, the cyclical nature of life, protection, and Black relationality permeate Love is a House That Even Death Can’t Knock Down. Jamie Robertson, Irene Antonia Diane Reece, and mk’s astounding work was so evocative upon my first viewing that I immediately began writing this lyric essay using pieces of text, literal images from photographs and video, and spiritual concepts present in the exhibition’s audio, as I walked about the space. I drew upon poetic traditions cemented by the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s which encapsulate the values present in the work. The literary use of invocation—literally invoking one’s ancestors into a space—mirrors the altars and family photos present in the exhibition. Repetition and the use of a collective “we” resist individualism and Western notions of linear time, which the exhibition also refuses. Excerpts of text conveying Black pride in the exhibition also appear in the essay as an homage to James H. Cone and the Black Arts Movement. I am grateful to these artists and to the Lawndale Art Center for the opportunity to collaborate.” - Ariana Brown

Author’s Bio

Ariana Brown is the author of We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). She holds a B.A. in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies, an M.F.A. in Poetry, and an M.S. in Library Science. Find her at arianabrown.com, @ArianaThePoet, and living her life in Houston, TX.

About The Exhibition

LoveisaHouseThatEvenDeathCan’tKnockDownis a photo-based exhibition that celebrates the sacredness of Black life through the veneration of family archives. This group exhibition is organized by and features the work of mk, Irene Antonia Diane Reece, and Jamie Robertson. Each artist works with their respective family archives as the grounding element of their creative practice. Collectively, their works address themes of life, death, and memory in relation to a Southern Black experience. The Gulf Coast landscape connects the creative practices of these three families and, while each uses photographic imagery, the exhibition is a multi-sensory experience including smell, sound, and installation elements.

mk’s TheViewInsideaCasket includes larger-than-life reproductions of their family archives accompanied by familiar objects, floral arrangements, and dirt. This work investigates coping mechanisms within the last remaining family archives of mk’s family and calls attention to their uprooted deep southern background in relation to the practices of memorial, forgiveness, and celebration. Since 2019, Reece’sHome-goingsis a continuation project using church objects, Black archives, and text to create a space for protection, memory, and celebration of Black lives. The layered metaphors and messages convey that Black lives are sacred, celebrated, and will be fought for in this space. Robertson presents works from her series ChartingtheAfriscapeof LeonCounty,Texas.Pairing her family archive with her own photographs, these works are an autobiographical meditation and documentation of Black landscapes in rural East Texas. Robertson states, “Growing up in Southeast Texas in a Black family, history was not relegated to events of the past. History was alive and in time with me. This aliveness guides my practice as my work bridges the distance between the past and present through the adoption of ancestral knowledge systems as an organizing principle.”

Together, mk, Reece, and Robertson explore relationships that folds time and space, part of the larger narrative and documentation of Black subjectivity in Texas and the Gulf Coast.

LOVE IS A HOUSE THAT EVEN DEATH CAN’T KNOCK DOWN Lyric essay

by Ariana Brown

Where are the photos of your grandmother?

If asked, would you sing her name loud enough for heaven to hear?

Can you remember her favorite song?

What has been forgotten or stolen in the arc of memory? Who took it?

Who was there after the violence?

Who mended the wound? Who kept the records?

Was it because they knew what it meant to be lost?

To lose?

When you skinned your knee or lost your pride to a bloody nose, who loved you? What medicine did they offer?

Do you remember how they met, the ones that raised you? When asked of love, which of your ancestors do you name?

*

Remember them all. Let nothing fade. The living grow amongst the dead, as we always have, connected by the gold thread of history kept by aunties, grannies, ma’dears, mamas, and caretakers. In the sticky plastic of photo albums black hands slid remnants of their yesterdays. A marker, a way of knowing, a pen scratched below scrawling a date. If you have never needed to build an archive you must not know what it is to be loved best by Black folk. Who will keep you when you are gone?

Remember the Reeces, Mr. Jenkins, John Lusk, and James H. Cone. Remember the reddish portrait of a couple in love, smiles as lively as the shapes on their clothes.Remember their style. Remember the unmistakable southern. The men who look like your grandfather. Remember when the men in the photo split wide an animal or sat with their suspenders bunching just so? Remember how handsome your father looked in uniform, despite the unkept promises of this country?

Remember the relatives who hid parts of themselves deep, who dealt in secrecy, whose truths we may never unfold. Remember all they cannot say. Who will protect the softest parts of you?

Remember whether the earth be brown or red and smattered with grass, we gather. We carry the outside inside, know that walls or buildings or institutions or unmarked graves will not separate our dead from us. Take this dirt, this gold plated frame, this weeping tree, and tell them who we have lost.

BLACK IS THE WORD. BLACK AS THE WORD. THE WORD IS BLACK. THE WORLD AS BLACK AS MY AUNTIE’S PRESSED HAIR. BLACK IS THE GOSPEL. BLACK IS THE CHURCH. BLACK AS YOUR COUSIN STANDING WITH ALL HIS PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD. PRECIOUS LORD, TAKE MY HAND, AND LEAD ME ON HOME TO A PLACE WHERE MY KIN ARE SAFE. BLACK IS, BLACK AIN’T. BLACK IS, BLACK AIN’T. BLACK IS THE REASON NO MATTER THE SEASON. BLACK AS JESUS,

I am bent over in my one good gardening glove tending to the ones I love so deeply I dust the pinks of flowers near their earthly heads so they may know the beauty of their memory. Black is God. Remember that, and you will never be lonely.

* I lost my Popo Isaac to the COVID-19 virus in summer 2020. An ornery man with a laugh that rivaled the gods, he was one of my favorite elders to be around as a child. He’d lived in League City with my grandmother in the same house for as long as I can remember. He wore a uniform of sandals, light wash denim shorts, and comfortable t-shirts, sometimes a hat. When we went to restaurants with the family, he’d eat off my little cousin Essence’s plate, saying he liked the way her food tasted more than his. He was energized by children, but firm in his discipline. The virus killed him before vaccines were developed. I remember watching news footage of white college students vacationing maskless on Galveston Beach a few weeks prior, wondering if he’d caught it somehow from my great granny in Galveston, if she’d caught it by being in proximity to the maskless white college students. I remember cursing the structures of white supremacy that made my Popo vulnerable, the fact that all the women in my family have outlived their husbands. I look at the photo of us during the last Thanksgiving, me holding a sweet potato pie wrapped in plastic, Popo Isaac smiling a closed smile before teasing my cousin who was taking the photo. I hold the grief like a horse’s reins and let it take me.

*

Dear stranger, we are calling to you from beyond the grave. Do not be afraid. We are speaking to you directly saying, there is more connecting us than blood. There always is. Though we speak in unison, we are varied as the blades of grass under your feet. We are every snapshot, every memory, every spell whispered by the trees. We are every blur of color you have ever seen. We are the shadows and the light. We are fighting against the limits of life. We are then and now. We will always be. When death comes knocking, let our love fill the house

mk

is an artist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2017, they received their BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston and are currently attending the University of New Mexico for their MFA in Photography. They are originally from a small rural town by the name of Sulligent, Alabama, a driving force for their work. They work in a variety of mediums ranging from photography, printmaking, and sculpture to pursue and question their upbringing, identity, family, and the terms of loss and memory.

They have shown at institutions such as the Blaffer Art Museum, The National Hispanic Cultural Center, and SITE Santa Fe.

01. the view inside the casket, 2020 Gilded archival inkjet print, baby’s breath, soil, bible turned to psalm 23, and various family items (detail view)

02. the view inside the casket, 2020 Gilded archival inkjet print, baby’s breath, soil, bible turned to psalm 23, and various family items (installation image)

Installation images by Ronald L. Jones

Irene Antonia Diane Reece

identifies as a contemporary artist and visual activist. Born and raised in Houston, Texas. She earned her BFA in Photography and Digital Media (Houston, TX) and MFA in Photography and Image-making (Paris, France). Reece’s photographic works, Black family archives, appropriated films, usage of text, and found objects create an insight into her world. The topics surrounding her work are racial identity, African diaspora, social injustice, family histories, re-memory, mental and community health. Reece’s objectives are to continue to take up space, be outspoken about the white-centric art world, and create forms of racial equity within her communities. Reece has exhibited in a solo exhibition at Galveston Arts Center (Galveston, TX). Group exhibitions: Openwalls Arles (Arles, FR), Vogue Festival at BASE MILANO (Milan, IT), Texas Biennial, and, recently, Dak’Art: La Biennale de Dakar, Black Rock 40 curated by Kehinde Wiley (Dakar, Senegal). Awards include: 2022 C/O Berlin Talent Award: Shortlist, The 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch, and MACK Books – First Book Award Shortlist: Billie-James. Her work has been featured in New York Times, Art Papers, OVER Journal, Lenscratch, FOAM Magazine, and The Photographer’s Green Book. Additionally with editorial contributions for ProPublica and a contributor for ‘You Are Your Best Thing’ Anthology by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown. This fall she will be exhibiting at FOTODOK (Utrecht, Netherlands) and Taymour Grahne Projects (London, UK).

01. I Promise I Will Never Forget You, 2021

Site- specific installation (inkjet print, church fans, communion wafers, and cross)

Call and Response, 2021 Salt word art Dimensions variable

02. In Remembrance of Me, 2021

Site specific installation Artificial flowers, Inkjet print, church fans, kneeler bench, and cross Dimensions variable

Installation images by Ronald L. Jones

Jamie Robertson

is a visual artist and educator from Houston, Texas. She earned a BA in Art and MFA in Studio Art from the University of Houston. She also holds an MS in Art Therapy from Florida State University. She is a former recipient of the American Art Therapy Association’s Pearlie Roberson Award and Red Bull Arts Microgrant. Robertson is also one half of the podcast Where I See Me, which examines the presence of Black and Brown people in comics and media. Her creative practice is rooted in the recollection of the personal and collective histories of the African Diaspora through lens-based media; with a focus on the Gulf South. Her work was featured in FORECAST 2021: SF Camerawork’s Annual Survey Exhibition, Flatland Film Festival, Art League Houston, Florida A&M University Foster-Tanner Fine Arts Gallery, 516 Arts, and internationally at Contemporary Calgary in Exposure Photography Festival in Canada. Her photobook Charting the Afriscape of Leon County, TX was published in December 2020 with Fifth Wheel Press. She currently works as a Lecturer at Sam Houston State University.

01. View of installation in John M. O’Quinn Gallery

04. Father and Son II (General Lusk and Melvin Lusk), 2022 Inkjet print 42 x 26”

Installation images by Ronald L. Jones and artist

Mission

Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.

About

Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances.

Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars, Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston.

Supporters

Lawndale’s exhibitions and programs are produced with generous support from The Anchorage Foundation of Texas; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; the Garden Club of Houston; David R. Graham; The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation; The John M. O’Quinn Foundation; The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Houston Endowment; Humanities Texas and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the federal ARP Act; Kathrine G. McGovern/ The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; The Rose Family Foundation; the Texas Commission on the Arts; The City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc. Additional support provided by Lindsey Schechter/Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico.