Armani Howard USA, b. 1993
Riverbed, 2023
Acrylic on canvas
71 x 68 in.
180.3 x 172.7 cm
180.3 x 172.7 cm
8907
Riverbed, by Armani Howard, is a response to Howard’s painting Dip. Like Dip, Riverbed depicts two spectral beings who are companions on a spiritual journey. Whereas the waters in Dip...
Riverbed, by Armani Howard, is a response to Howard’s painting Dip. Like Dip, Riverbed depicts two spectral beings who are companions on a spiritual journey. Whereas the waters in Dip are calm, the waters have now turned turbulent and appear to be battling against the figures. The figures are carrying a fishing net; there are catfish swimming around them. Howard is African American Thai. In both cultures, catfish are sometimes depicted as spirit guides. “These two figures are going through this journey of self,” Howard says. “In Dip, they’re in cleansing waters, and now they’re finding themselves in trying circumstances.” Howard’s work cross-examines the roles of memory, nostalgia, and folkloric narratives in the creation and preservation of identity. Howard’s interest in the ways storytelling is used to construct identity developed early in life. The loss of his father when Howard was a young child led him to search for information about his father’s life and history. “Through learning more about him I realized the connection of how an individual’s passing, unspoken creeds and the memories that are shared begins to dictate their Identity,” Howard says. “I began to question the roles that help shape identity and how they can mold the beliefs in one’s heritage.” Thinking about what that dynamic means to a family over generations, Howard draws heavily upon family folklore in his work. His nebulous, conceptually layered compositions depict an intersectional space between objective reality and the more speculative mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of life. Raised as a Buddhist, the practice of meditation has informed Howard’s understanding of how physical bodies are, and sometimes are not, boxed in by seemingly concrete circumstances. This understanding manifests in the work as the figures in Howard’s paintings are often blurred or hidden, or depicted with allegorical or symbolic features. The physical environments they inhabit are heavily abstracted and obscured, suggesting a realm outside of time in which dream life, memory, and imagination coexist with materiality.