The subjects in Marryam Moma’s latest exhibition have daring stories to tell.
“I wanted to focus on the disrupters, the door openers, the path pavers,” collage artist Moma says of her new exhibit, ICONoclasts, an ode to Black joy amid a society intent on inflicting despair.
The show opened July 28 at the Emma Darnell Aviation Museum and will be on view through September 8.
Among the collection are collages of James Baldwin, Stevie Wonder, Sojourner Truth, poet Nikki Giovanni and Tennessee State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson raising Black Power fists.
“They remind me of Malcolm and Martin — what they stood for, what they fought for,” Moma says of Jones and Pearson, the state legislators who were expelled in April after protesting for gun control, then reinstated. “They give us so much agency. They show young Black people that you can fight for what you believe in and get it.”
Black joy was the baseline of Moma’s childhood in Nigeria. It was a potpourri of children, love, laughter and spices, thanks to her Tanzanian mother and Nigerian father.
“When I came to America, I tried to hold that in my heart, but I realized I wasn’t always celebrated in the spaces I was in,” says Moma, who moved at 16 when she and her twin brother were accepted to Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
“It took some time; I was young and naive, but I started to see the racial divide,” she says. “I had never experienced stereotypes and racism as a Black child in a Black country.”
As an architecture major, Moma was one of critically few Black women in the school. She was often shocked and upset by the assumptions and questions.
“I thought about how to teach, tailor and take control of those types of conversations, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I could use art as a platform to tell positive, uplifting, empowering stories about Black life,” she says. “Black joy is a huge part of my narrative.”
Exploring Black joy also means celebrating those who resist and break ground, those who excel in their fields and those who bring joy to the world through their music, art or social impact.
Moma only had to reach back a few decades to pay homage to those upon whose shoulders the Justins stand.
In a collage of Baldwin, pink Bougainvillea flowers found in the village of St. Paul de Vence in the South of France and vines native to North Carolina envelop the prophetic writer as he stands beneath the “Colored Entrance Only” sign at a Durham, North Carolina, malt shop in 1963. A wool coat drapes over his suit and tie. Between his fingers are notes and his signature cigarette. His facial expression is stern yet weary, and his posture self-assured.
“He was just coming back from Paris, where he lived. He came to give his voice to the Civil Rights Movement,” Moma says of the photo by Steve Schapiro on which the collage is based. In this piece, Moma re-imagines the colored entrance as opulent, as VIP only. “This is the entrance for the kings; they just didn’t know it,” she says.
Moma’s work is crisp and measured. Her collages are meticulously done. Hand-cut elements. Precise placements. Every piece has a function.
The bright white backgrounds push the viewer to focus on the stunning dark-complexioned figures and vivid florals bursting from each canvas. Flowers are essential to her stories. They bring vibrancy and color as much as they bring depth, she says.
“They lend themselves to this ethereal feeling; something we can’t control,” she says. “So many pieces also speak to specific birthplaces of the iconoclasts or areas where they found their poetic license, their musical genius — whatever it is they offer us.”
The floral elements carry a level of positivity that Moma likes to portray, though she was also intentional about choosing some subjects with controversial pasts, like Motown heartthrob Marvin Gaye and pioneering jazzman Miles Davis.
“If you know them, you know their past, but . . . my work is also a call to not ostracize Black bodies because of past mistakes. To forgive, to make space for redemption and resolution,” she says.
“Atlanta is a great foundational space to build your art practice, and I am really humbled by how I have been accepted and embraced,” says Moma, who also has a space at Westview Studios. She’s inspired by the artists she’s worked next door to in the space.
One of the Atlanta artists she most admires, photographer Melissa Alexander, is an ICONoclast.
“I was excited to put her in the show,” Moma says. “I love how she documents and preserves the history and culture of the city.”
For Moma, ICONoclasts are a level up in scale. A trio of her largest works to date honors three Black women whose personalities couldn’t be contained in her usually smaller canvases.
“I hope people leave wanting to learn more,” she says, “but I also want to empower people to feel that wherever they are in their family, their community life, their journey, they can also take control of their situation and be an iconoclast.”
Moma was a professional model for 15 years and hopes to create collages that more closely dance with her love of fashion. Whatever comes next, she’s happy to see how it unfolds in Atlanta.
“It’s electric. I see the landscape growing and shifting with big agencies like UTA making a home here,” she says. The global talent agency now has offices in Atlanta, as well as an art gallery, the UTA Artist Space, Atlanta, gallery in Midtown. “The arts are going in the right direction, and I’m looking forward to seeing more organizations pick from the incredible talent Atlanta has rather than going outside.”
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Angela Oliver is a proud native of old Atlanta who grew up in the West End. A Western Kentucky University journalism and Black studies grad, daily news survivor and member of Delta Sigma Theta, she works in the grass roots nonprofit world while daydreaming about seeing her scripts come alive on the big screen.
