Jae and Wadsworth Jarrell: Art Making / World Making: Albany Museum of Art

Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell are longtime artists, demonstrators, and provocateurs. In their early work as founding members of the Black radical arts group AfriCOBRA, they worked to provide a new visual language of Black culture. With key elements like Shine, Positive Images, Cool-Ade Colors, and Visibility that the collective established as key points in their philosophy, they created their own world, with their own aesthetic practice and their own visual language.

Art Making / World Making presents a selection of works by the Jarrells from key points in their lives. It begins with their early art careers, progressing through moments that influenced their practices, such as the first collective solo exhibition of AfriCOBRA at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1970, AfriCOBRA I, or their work in Nigerian Arts Festival Festac ’77. As it moves into the present, Art Making/World Making explores how their work has changed throughout the decades.

This exhibition marks a pivotal moment, not only for the Albany Museum of Art but for these exhibiting artists. It acts as a symbolic homecoming. Wadsworth Jarrell was born in Albany, and last exhibited at the museum in 1987. Jae Jarrell also has connections to Albany, as the late C.B. King was her brother-in-law.

Wadsworth & Jae Jarrell: Art Making / World Making aims to highlight the legacy of these two dedicated, lifelong artist-activists. Through the interdisciplinary textile practice of Jae Jarrell and the dynamic narrative-building drawings and paintings of Wadsworth Jarrell, these artists together share a passion for visibility, advocacy, and positive representations of Blackness.

This exhibition is made possible with support from the Walter & Frances Bunzl Family Foundation.