Rashid JohnsonBroken Soul “Gifts and Messages”, 2025

Ceramic tile, mirror, spray enamel, branded black walnut, oyster shell, oil stick, black soap, wax, bronze

152.4 × 182.9 × 7.6 cm

About the artist

In the more than 20 years since Chicago-born artist Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago; lives in New York City) presented his first solo exhibition the MCA, he has continued to develop an expansive and renowned body of artwork using art history, philosophy, and Black popular culture as conceptual scaffolding. With Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinker s, Johnson returns to the MCA as a prominent artist with numerous national and international projects, awards, and solo exhibitions to his credit. Unchanged is the artist’s remarkable capacity to ask fundamental questions about the fragile human psyche in the face of ineffable historic flows and forces. Keenly attuned to this young century’s central ideas, questions, and aesthetics, Johnson has forged a personal iconography that grapples with the fundamental concerns of our time. The exhibition presents 70 artworks spanning key moments in Johnson’s career, including his poignant black-and-white photographs of The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club inspired by the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois; the wall reliefs made of black-soap and wax known as Cosmic Slops ; and the Anxious Men and Broken Men series, which evolved in recent years to reflect the chaos and isolation of contemporary life in the United States.

About the artist

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