Mario Joyce

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

My studio practice explores how memories move through time and generations morph into elaborate and distilled capsules of meaning that transmute messages of identity, belonging, and place. Originally from South Solon, Ohio, What I make is influenced by my family’s history. Over the years I have traced my genealogy and unearthed many stories told by family members revealing untold truths and sometimes embellished stories that narrate both a literal history and an emotional landscape of my familial origins. These ruminations are processed through layered paintings, the act of creating which allows me to channel ancestral messages and generational traumas that have impacted my upbringing as a Queer Black man in rural America. The work posits the question what purpose do these stories, true or partially true, serve in the formation of our individual and collective identities? In particular, I am interested the meaning these stories play in particular for African American families who have used oral histories as a way to survive systems of oppression imposed on them for centuries. Each painting begins by laying down soil that I have gathered from my family's farm in rural Ohio. Growing up I heard many stories of ancestors who inhabited and tended to this soil which I see as an extension of my body. The soil represents my heritage, channeling my ancestor's presence through the earthen material. Layers of paint overlay the soil embedding it into compositions and creating a visual...

Artwork