Grace Jones

Grace Jones

Stacey A. Robinson
American, b. 1972

archival inkjet print of a digital drawing
52 x 34 inches

print

There are so many layered depths to Grace Jones’s work. This portrait is a work in progress that is as many of newer works represents the drawing through the sample as a state of Black becoming, transcendence, and evolution. As I’m making this work, I’m refamiliarizing myself with her catalogue. Still my fav work of hers is Operattack from her 1985 album Slave to the Rhythm. This piece is a House music/Disco classic. Which I first became familiar with circa 1990, in my house music, club dancing days. Her echoed scream of “Slave” continuously overlapping, reverberating at points becomes inaudible when intermingled with the words ``annihilating rhythm” in various tones and pitches. At the central point of her performance, Jones then goes into what seems like a series of vocal thrusts, listening to it I feel a sense of pain in her a cadence reminiscent of a chain gang laying miles of train tracks in rhythm while surviving the moment. The chant becomes faster, almost becoming a different sound through the layered staccato. The stereo sound production bounces back and forth through from both ears, while the following “Dance to the Rhythm” command reverberates much deeper calls to much higher place. The vocal thrusts return to then do the same. By the song’s end the vocalizations become horrifically heavy in a sense and brilliantly leaves us there with no resolve, only anticipation, and speculation.

Ewing Gallery purchase