Vanessa Johnson’s solo exhibition at the ArtRage Gallery offers a full exposition of her skills as a storyteller, as an individual deeply concerned about connections to ancestors and youth, and as a visual artist employing a range of techniques and tools.
“In the Center of the Crossroads: Standing in the Intersection Between Racism, Climate Change and Memory” is a large, wide-ranging show. It encompasses quilts and multimedia installations, small cloth bags filled with soil from Syracuse and Ghana, West Africa, poems and a dystopian fable, “The Last Tree.” It envisions a time in not so-distant future when “there was no one left living on earth except the last tree.”
And the show draws on Johnson’s experiences as an African American living in the United States and as a person who’s spent considerable time in Ghana. In addition, she discusses varied narratives: the impact of redlining on African American communities, the history of sharecropping in the southern United States after the Civil War, and neighborhood activists’ campaign for radical changes in the design of a sewage-treatment plant set to be built on Syracuse’s South Side.
Yet, that discussion takes place within an imaginative, visual framework. Johnson works with a palette of green, gold and orange colors, integrates masks from Ghana and images of Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist and Civil War veteran, and fabric and cloth of various kinds. She utilizes mud cloth from Mali and batting cotton, batik fabric and tie-dyed cloth.
In “The Last Tree,” a mixed-media installation, the artist fashions a tree shape from various fabrics, a creation that stands over six feet tall. Its trunk is constructed from multicolor layers, and strands of fabric drape down on the floor.
Her text refers to the tree as a witness to a dying planet, as a being with memories of “sacrificing limbs for drums, and cradles, and shelters for mankind and animals, and trees.”
Another large installation, “Let Justice Roll Down like Waters,” combines silhouettes, masks from Ghana, cowrie shells and deep-blue color. The work honors young women of color who are water warriors and environmental-justice activists. And so, Johnson provides brief profiles of seven activists, including Chante Davis, a 17-year-old from Louisiana who helped organize a march from New Orleans to Houston, and Tokata Iron Eyes, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a youth leader of “ReZpect Our Water.”
Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters by Vanessa Johnson. 2025. Mixed media installation. Cotton fabric Ghana and U.S., rescued fabric from discarded clothing, polyester fabric, hand dyed fabric, black Adinkra cloth – Ghana, African mask, wood boxes, nails, masks from Ghana, sewing trims, cowrie shells, glass and metal beads, archival ink.
Amos 5:24
“But Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters honors young women of color who are water warriors and environmental justice activists…earth protectors.ArtRage Gallery
The installation hangs on a gallery wall. In front of it, there’s an altar with water drop shaped cloth and pens. Viewers are invited to write down names of earth and water protectors.
The artist also created the installation “Excavating the Center of the Crossroads” which consists of five brightly colored segments mounted on a wall. They are made from cotton from the United States and Ghana, mud cloth from Mali, bone masks and other elements. Again, viewers are invited to participate, to leave messages honoring ancestors.
One of the show’s highlights is the installation “Hye Won Hye,” whose title translates to “That Which Does Not Burn.” It has three segments and blends paint, acrylic, a photo of Tubman, and an Adinka symbol; a design with roots in the culture of the Akan people, a major ethnic group in Ghana. Such symbols signify a concept or proverb.
Beyond that, the exhibit displays “The Strength of the Crocodile Is in the Water,” an installation paying homage to Asase Yaa aka Asasa Afua, a central figure in the Ashanti belief system of Ghana. She’s seen as an earth goddess, a symbol of fertility and the interconnections of all living beings.
There are also small story quilts, mixed-media banners hanging from a wall and small pieces hanging from the gallery’s ceiling.
This is an extensive show encompassing vivid colors, multiple themes and Johnson’s foundational beliefs. She speaks of bearing witness to climate change and how power plants and refineries are far more likely to be built in brown and Black neighborhoods, of the primacy of community, of experiences she’s lived and interpreted in her artworks.
“Unwrapping Vanessa,” her first solo exhibit at ArtRage, was staged in 2017. There she spoke passionately of contemporary history, of children who never had a chance to grow up: Anne Frank, murdered in a concentration camp; the four Black children who died in the KKK’s 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church; and others. In the current exhibition, she brings renewed passion as she focuses on land, society and the very existence of life on our planet.
“In the Center of the Crossroads” is on display through May 24, 2025 at ArtRage, 505 Hawley Ave.
Admission is free, and the gallery is open from 2-6 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
ArtRage has scheduled several workshops and events in conjunction with the show. On May 10, from 10 a.m. to noon, the gallery will host “Re-sist: Tie Workshop with Vanessa Johnson.” It’s a family-friendly event; children 10 and older are welcome if accompanied by an adult. Admission is free. Registration is required in advance on the gallery website.
Then on May 15, “Patchwork People: Storytelling with Vanessa Johnson” will run from 7-9 p.m. The event will focus on tales told in cloth; participants are invited to bring their own quilts and discuss them.
Finally, on May 23, from 8-9:30 p.m., Johnson and the Mattie Masie Ensemble will perform her play “Shirley Chisolm: Unbought, Unbossed, Unforgotten.” It features excerpts from Chisolm’s speeches, recordings and interviews. She served several terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the first woman and first African American to run for President of the United States.
For more information, call 315-218-5711 or access artragegallery.org
Carl Mellor covered visual arts for the Syracuse New Times from 1994 through 2019. He continues to write about exhibitions and artists in the Syracuse area.
