LOUD JOY | LEEYA JACKSON

During Leeya Jackson’s adolescence, she doodled on everything and anything to channel the images out of her head and focus on her tasks. Her sketchbooks sat empty, but everything else was filled with her neurographic art. 

In “Loud Joy,” Jackson’s work is equally multi-modal, noisy, and curious, exploring themes related to her own neurodivergence, blackness, femininity, shame, and joy. Her interests lie in the complexity and strange beauty of Black neurodivergent girlhood, memory, and things in our shadows that others struggle to see. She is also inspired by and references the works of Afro-futuristic writer Octavia Butler, the story quilts of Faith Ringgold, the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo, and the heroic portraiture of Kehinde Wiley. She uses various mediums, such as painting, printmaking, design/typography, film, and animation, to create vibrant, lush, layered, and scattered imagery. 

Her work explores the intersections of identity, specifically Blackness, femininity, and queerness, with the added motifs of celestial/universal surrealism. In her recent journey to being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, she has also started to explore questions about Black Neurodivergence in her artwork. Distinctive features of her work across all mediums are loud, vibrant color, maximalism, and afro-futurism.

GALLERY HOURS:  

Monday - Friday: 8:00 am-10:00 pm

Saturday: 9:00 am-10:00 pm

Sunday: 12:00 pm-6:00 pm