Fourth ascension (I) is a painting by Armani Howard, a multi-disciplinary, African American-Thai artist whose work cross-examines the roles of memory, nostalgia, and folkloric narratives in the creation and preservation of identity. Says Howard, “[The painting] references a body of works where the growth through the mind and eyes of beings during our most transitional phases is captured. This composition swims deeper into dialogue about being born anew through new experiences.” 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.