Sojourner Truth Parsons
b. 1984, Canada
Sojourner Truth Parsons’s paintings act as indices for moments of intensity and intimacy, amplifying sensation, texture and tone. In the artist’s compositions, flashes of saturated colour, flattened space and familiar motifs come into relation, fraying the border between interior and exterior worlds. Through her use of rich, vibratory tone, Parsons locates and elaborates the subtlety of brief details and moments that might otherwise go unnoticed: fleeting interactions of light, sound and provoked memory. Through a seemingly cool, graphic repose, the artist’s depictions of transience are as ecstatic as they are mournful. The tableaux of silhouettes that emerge play with our sense of space: recognisable objects come forward and recede into darkness; narrative is held in stasis, creating moments of feeling rather than recognition.