The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure
National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom
February 22 – May 19, 2024
Jennifer Packer is included in The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, a panoramic exhibition of work by contemporary artists from the African diaspora.
Jennifer Packer, A Stone's Throw, 2021; oil on canvas.
Curated by writer Ekow Eshun, The Time is Always Now highlights the use of figures to illuminate the richness and complexity of Black life. As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, the exhibition examines its absence—and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced.
Jennifer Packer’s painted figures, still lifes, and interiors are exceptional for their expressive fields of color, worked tenderly by the artist’s hand. They are images made with the utmost care—for the subject, and for the artist herself. Packer’s subjects are often friends and family, loved ones who serve as an emotive force in her life. Her compositions critique the positionality and autonomy of the marginalized subject, addressing the primacy of looking (by both artist and viewer) as an act of accountability and representation. In Packer’s painted fields, distinct features fade against the color of their environment, creating a protective distance between the direct gaze of the viewer and the subject’s interiority.
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure is on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London, through May 19. To learn more, click here.