On Monday, acclaimed artist Jamea Richmond-Edwards gave a presentation on her exhibit currently on display at The Wellin for its Artists in Conversation series. Her talk offered an intimate look into the ideas, inspirations and personal experiences that have shaped the pieces within her exhibition, Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Another World and Yet the Same.
The exhibition showcases seven years of Richmond-Edwards’s mixed-media work, where themes of race, identity and her interest in research converge through layered collage of bold imagery and colors. Drawing from her Detroit roots and the sounds of jazz, soul, Motown, techno and hip-hop, Richmond-Edwards infuses her art with rhythm that is reflective of the music and experiences that have shaped her life and vision.
Opening her presentation with a slide of propaganda and current events that dominated daily life during her upbringing in the 1980s revealed to the audience major components shaping her perspective for this exhibition. “Millennials are tired,” she noted, referencing the weight of generational trauma that many people around her age have undergone. She has translated this emotional weight and turmoil into the fictional narrative behind this exhibition.
Her background as a clarinetist and marching band member allowed Richmond-Edwards to receive a scholarship to Jackson State University, a historically Black college, where she connected deeply with the cultural legacy of HBCU marching bands. This has continued to influence her work today as she combines both film production and musical imagery to reflect on the influence of pop culture on this collection.
One of the most deeply personal inspirations she discussed was a UFO encounter in 2020 experienced by her and other family members. She shares that this profoundly changed her and later inspired works such as It’s on the Mountain Top! (2022). Though set in Stone Mountain, Georgia, rather than Silver Springs, Maryland, the painting, she adds, shows her development as a storyteller with alien figures added not from direct experience, but an imaginative attempt at engaging the viewer.
Biblical themes also surface in works like The Fire Next Time (2022), referencing the Great Flood and the foreshadowing of the fires that are supposed to follow. Her journey through coldness, both literal and emotional, was largely inspired by fellow Detroit artist Mario Moore and his painting, Pillars of the Frontier (2024), which includes numerous female family members alongside Rosa Parks in a winter scene. Seeing Moore depict a winter scene, which Richmond-Edwards share are rare in common Black art, sparked her own research into the “Little Ice Age,” a time period she shares was largely caused by the mass slaughter of indigenous Americans that directly caused the planet to cool.
This research into the “Little Ice Age” and her recent move to Detroit in 2021, set up Antarctica as a key metaphor in Richmond-Edwards’s recent paintings. The fictional character thought up by her, “Iceberg,” featured in pieces like Alpha (2024), which is not included in the exhibit, leads his family to the icy continent, representing a search for freedom and emotional rebirth. “Because of everything happening in the world, I have a really cold heart,” she shared, linking personal struggle with global instability. The journey continues in Omega (2024), where family members appear as central figures again. Her niece, Diamond, and cousin, DJ, appear as banner girls in the center of the painting as they lead the procession for Iceberg and draw on Richmond-Edward’s personal connection to marching bands and the military associations with banner girls. This painting, she shares, is full of symbolism with her taking inspiration from the indigenous-made Serpent Mound located in Ohio and inclusion of a labyrinth that signifies her “grappling with my own adversity and struggles with my own humanity,” and shares “I’m thinking about overcoming this journey, this labyrinth.”
Her piece titled Mothership also builds on to this central focus of family by including her sons, grandnephew, nephew, and niece within the imagery. This ship is named Gloria, after her grandmother, symbolizing the protection provided by those close to her and the legacy that prior generations have left for her. Her sons, she explains, are an essential component of this work due to her mothership over them and the figurative meaning that this ship carries with her holding them in her womb during pregnancy. This incredibly detailed piece encompasses almost all aspects of Richmond-Edwards inspiration for this exhibit with the additional inclusion of a reference to her UFO experience and drawing on her research into the past.
Richmond-Edwards shares that initially she did not feel comfortable painting the American flag, but after considerable time spent researching her family lineage, she discovered that as a person with Black indigenous roots she has had a family member fight in every war throughout American history. She realized through this discovery that American history is her history. Therefore, the literal journey to Antarctica became a metaphoric deep dive into history that connected Richmond-Edwards to the roots of America that she now incorporates into her paintings.
As music usually does within her paintings, it is a central aspect of the imagery for this piece with the guitar in the center of the ship with beams surrounding it. She includes that the movie Titanic has a large influence on this decision due to the impact that the band playing till the boat sunk had on her creative thinking when composing this painting.
According to Richmond-Edwards, the overarching theme of this exhibition is a hero’s journey, especially that of Iceberg who serves as the liberator in this narrative told through the paintings. As she continued to work on the pieces for the collection, she realized how Iceberg transformed into a stand-in for the artist herself. “The work is essentially a motif for my struggle,” Richmond-Edwards added. Mentioning a reference she brought up earlier in the presentation, she included how her use of Michael Jackson’s glitter gloves on characters is symbolic of this personal connection to the narrative. When she places those gloves on characters within the pieces she is claiming power and “getting over this cold and overcoming fear.”
As a mother, artist and visionary, Richmond-Edwards left the audience with a message of hope and resilience. “Every time I visit this space, I’m always inspired,” she said of Hamilton College. “Even though the world seems chaotic, I’m always reminded we’re going to be okay—because y’all got us.”
Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Another World and Yet the Same is on view at the Wellin Museum of Art through June 14, 2026.
