Gordon Robichaux is pleased to present Reverend Joyce McDonald’s (b. 1951 in Brooklyn, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) first solo exhibition at the gallery. A self-taught, visionary, multidisciplinary artist, activist, and minister, McDonald fuses experience with strength, hope, and power.

In the center of the gallery, on a large pedestal, the viewer is greeted by a group of ten small figurative works made of humble materials—air dry clay, nail polish, paper towels, fake eyelashes, Wite-Out, fabric, glitter, seashells, and Mod Podge. The “testimonial sculptures”—which the artist created in her apartment using her kitchen table, sink, and improvised tools such as an electric nail file—memorialize specific events in both her personal life and the broader world. GLORY (A Taste of Sweetness after Near Death), 2001, a female figure with an ecstatic gaze directed up to the heavens and wearing a luminous purple cloak, is a self-portrait that describes McDonald’s survival after a near-death surgery. A kneeling figure—Colin Kaepernick, 2020—celebrates the sports star’s activism for racial justice. Nearby, on two walls of the gallery surrounding the pedestal, a group of recent portraits from her series—Our Lives Mattered—honor African American individuals who lost their lives to systemic racism and police violence. Throughout, these tender sculptural works enshrine McDonald’s own life stories and wider cultural experiences of family, love, loss, illness, healing, transformation, and transcendence.