Tenacity, Toni Scott’s exhibition currently on view at Silo118 gallery, is described by curator Bonnie Rubenstein as “a visual narrative embodying triumph of the human spirit.” Composed of four components — “Bloodlines,” a series of indigo portraits connected to her ancestral stories; “Wash(ed) Pieces,” touching the fragile connection of history to the present; “Indigo Sacred Water Paintings”; and “Sculptures” — the work represents Scott’s ancestral lineage and its connection to the human spirit.
When I ask Scott about “Bloodlines,” a large piece with warmer colors than her other indigo work, she mentions asemic writing to explain the patterned red that covers most of the painting. To illustrate the concept, she takes a pen and scribbles on a piece of paper. Seeing the signs form, I’m surprised. For a second, I think Scott, like me, writes Arabic. But she doesn’t. She has tapped into something that predates the Semitic language I grew up with, even language in general. As a text-based artist, I knew our species had evolved to identify crossed lines faster. Indeed, in the primal savannah, this meant something noteworthy had occurred: Someone like us might have tried to communicate the presence of danger or opportunity.
Scott believes memory has traveled with us — or within us — transported by something older than words, even older than meaning. Science established that our bodies carry trauma. Scott’s work demonstrates how the wealth of the collective is also held in our beings. She shared with me how long her “meditation” paintings took to achieve. Despite them being “simple” circles, Scott explains how it took her entire career to drip the blue just like so. The result is a feat: The thickness of textured paint combined with the circular form is an ode to the complexity of our breaths. Fittingly, Silo118 gallery chose to hang three of these — an invitation to take three breaths as you visit the show.