essays

Contact jodiannburey@gmail.com for all inquiries and commissions.

“Artists are our greatest interpreters. They translate our selves to ourselves. But they do not do this work alone. We must bring our language of living. Our histories, our stories, our dreams, our grief, our longing, our joys. This is why one person can casually walk past a painting, while that same painting moves another person to tears. This is because to them, a flower isn’t just a flower. It’s the conversations had with a parent before their passing. A picnic table in the sun isn’t just a table, but the post-breakup retreat to Hawai'i to stave off pangs of depressive suicidal thoughts. That full-body hug the figure gives herself is the hug you owe your sister. How do we live with art? By honoring its power to steady our breath.”

— JODI-ANN BUREY, ON LIVING WITH ART

“It is all just so ordinary. I need to see Black people as ordinary, unremarkable, existing so plainly in a random, non-descript, non-urgent, non-teachable moment, nonfirst- to-do-this-and-that slice of life. This is the work American Storyteller aims to do in the exhibition’s title. To emphasize that Black life is life life; that Black storytellers give and give and give, and institutions take and take and take, treating our stories like asterisks to American culture. No, we are the culture.”

— JODI-ANN BUREY, AN AFTERNOON WITH JACOB LAWRENCE