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Westword

History, pop culture, urban folklore, and improvisation drive my work as an image maker. I’m interested in how this source material translates to shape, text, and color that coalesce into meaning within abstract fields. In recent paintings, I blend formal abstraction with poorly rendered figures that recall my primary school days - an intentionally naive and self-taught drawing approach that allows my subject matter to more fluidly inhabit both real and imagined worlds.

Westword comprises a selection of paintings that evolved amidst Trump’s rise to power, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the explosive civil rights protests that emerged in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by the Minneapolis Police in May of 2020. This period of turmoil prompted a reflective turn inward in my studio practice, resulting in more overt exploration of my identity as an African American through kindred themes of isolation, otherness, trauma, and rites of passage.

- Taj Matumbi, October 2022

Maus Contemporary is a contemporary art gallery and space dedicated to supporting creativity with a focus on experimental as well as issue-driven work. Through representing emerging, established, and internationally recognized artists, the gallery is committed to bringing a global perspective to contemporary issues and practices across the Visual Arts. The program consists of exhibitions, print publications, and media outreach, emphasizing on a cross-generational narrative, placing contemporary artists in dialogue with and within the context of historically relevant artists.

A rigorous gallery exhibition program, focusing on ten to twelve week long exhibitions, has become a staple of curatorial excellence in the South of the US, and the gallery has received critical attention from the press, including Art Forum and Art in America. The exhibition Mark Flood: FACEBOOK FARM was selected as one of three finalists for the AICA-USA Award for Excellence in Art Criticism and Curatorial Achievement in the category "Best show in a commercial space nationally outside of New York".
The gallery's mission is to offer a platform for experimentation in a culturally difficult environment through four to six gallery exhibitions a year in addition to curated projects and exhibitions abroad.

Maus Contemporary has released over a dozen publications so far, most recently monographs on gallery artists Leslie Smith III, Spanish artist Irene Grau, Peruvian-American artist Catherine Tafur, and is currently working on a monograph on American artist Melissa Vandenberg.