The Museum of the African Diaspora’s Emerging Artists Program, a staple of the institution’s programming since 2015, is a rare thing in the world of Bay Area museums. It’s a generous open call that results not in massive group shows — or even group shows at all — but three-month solo shows for local artists, plus stipends. These shows remain sure-fire ways of catching talented Bay Area artists early in their ascendency.
Enter Oakland artist Zekarias Musele Thompson, whose solo show The Meeting Place is on view through Sept. 1 on the museum’s second floor. This is not an overly polished, sterile exhibition, but an installation of art and music that gives the sense of being in progress, or possibly just finished. Wrapping around the gallery’s walls are oil-painted photographic prints of people in landscapes, scenes of vast spaces and repeated patterns.
Between these mounted works on paper, Thompson has placed lavender strips of painter’s tape used to mask off portions of the photographs. Like confetti or accent marks, the bits of tape dangle, twist and bend, implying that these works were made here, in MoAD’s gallery, and only recently achieved their finished state. In actuality, they’re props — tools used in the artist’s studio that have entered the gallery as a demonstration. Bringing the residue along to the big show is Thompson’s way of offering a glimpse into their process; it gives The Meeting Place a festooned feeling, an unexpected and off-kilter zing.
Complementing this tactic is the show’s sound element, which plays pleasantly over gallery speakers in a continuous loop. While scores of various lengths are meant to correspond to particular diptychs and triptychs within the gallery, the visitor experience is less defined — you hear things as you hear them, while looking where you’re looking. And what you hear (Thompson on alto sax, synthesizers, electric guitar and bass, shruti box and singing) is light and airy, with repetition marked by bright bursts of sound.
Circling the gallery and one lavender stand-alone wall, Thompson’s painted photographs range in density. Some bear the lightest of interventions, like a thin horizon line and an extra-purplish cloud. Others overflow with colorful emphasis, drawing the eye to a specific part of a landscape, or illustrating the things a photograph can’t capture: thoughts, implied emissions, invisible compositional elements.
