Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades

Book excerpt: Painter of vibrant assemblages and champion of African American art, Suzanne Jackson receives her first monograph Published on the occasion of the first full-career survey of Savannah-based artist Suzanne Jackson (born 1944) at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia, Five Decades illuminates a career that spans more than 50 years, across painting, drawing, theatre, costume design, dance, printmaking and sculpture. The book presents a unique selection of Jackson's artworks and explicates their relationships to identity, community, the natural world and the human body. In addition to featuring new photo documentation and archival images, the book includes essays that contextualize Jackson's practice through the lenses of ecowomanism, materiality, an ethics of care and African American retentions. Five Decades complicates canonical and exclusionary narratives and timelines, opening up Jackson's work to new generations of artists, thinkers and doers to find inspiration in the singular contributions one person can make to collective culture.