All Over the Body, 2014, reflects Rashid Johnson’s process of using a wide range of media to explore themes of personal narratives and cultural identities. The work consists of coarse black soap and wax hurled on staggered, mirrored tile. Johnson plays with the contrast between the geometric grid of reflective tiles and his splashed, dynamic mark-making. The work’s opaque material juxtaposes against the pearlescent tiles to create abstract yet symbolic layers of meaning.
“I'd like to create as much complexity
and contradiction as possible.”
—Rashid JohnsonJohnson’s use of black soap, wax, and tile in All Over the Body represents a complex engagement with the material realities of the African American collective experience. He draws inspiration from artists like David Hammons, who in the 1980s pioneered the practice of incorporating cultural materials in contemporary ways, transforming them into abstractions while retaining a strong connection to their ethnic origins. Similarly, Johnson's use of black soap bridges his personal history, as the son of an African American history professor, with conceptual artistic expression. Per Johnson, black soap is significant both for its material properties and its cultural meaning. “Black soap is this kind of healing material that you can find in West Africa,” he explains, “but you also find it on the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn, and Chicago.”
The material thus tracks a geography of movement and removal, aligned with Johnson’s key themes of “race, struggle, grief and grievance, but also joy and excitement around the tradition and opportunities of Blackness.” Johnson belongs to the generation of young Black artists that identify themselves as “post-black,” who apply a level of conceptual complexity to their work’s themes of racial and cultural identity. He confronts the existential aspects of his own life through the creation of works, All Over the Body included, that emerge from a blend of insightful analysis and unrestrained exploration of materials.
