ABOUT THE WORK
RECENT EXHIBTIONS
June 2024: THE KENNEDY CENTER, Washington DC
https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/g/ga-gn/lisa-jones-gentry/
https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/exhibits/2024-2025/people-who-used-the-shout-exhibit/
August 2022: THE FEATHERSTONE CENTER FOR THE
ARTS, Oaks Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard
“Celebrating Black Female Creativity”
https://www.mvtimes.com/2022/08/03/featherstone-exhibit-celebrates-black-female-creativity-imagination/
STATEMENT OF THE ARTIST: LISA JONES GENTRY
I consider myself to be part of the Contemporary Afro Futurism movement in art, reflected in my work as a way of looking within to see a world that is beyond that which we see with our physical eyes. By looking within, I believe that we are able to transmute and neutralize some of the pain that is part of the historical and present-day experience of African Americans and other descendants of the Diaspora as well as Africans on the continent who suffered under the chains of colonialism.
My work represents a look inside out--- a deconstruction of the unspeakable to reveal the inner peace and love that is always there even in times of despair. For me that world is awash in brilliant color and abstraction that represents the pain in a way that allows us to move beyond it into a new present-day reality where it can no longer define or limit us.
I believe that in abstraction, there can be peace because we are able to overcome that which has kept us in emotional shackles even after the removal of physical restraints. I paint and create that new reality that has been opened up to us as individuals who have overcome and now can fully claim a new future.
The work in my new series JOURNEYS OF THE DIASPORA reflects my belief that in looking within to that world that has always existed through the inner eye, we can create a new lens with which to examine a part of history that still resonates in the present-day experience.