“Make work.” Laura James shared this concise yet powerful mantra with me during a visit to her Bronx studio in West Farms. A poster bearing the phrase hangs on her wall — a nod, she explained, to the influence of Marcus Garvey’s industrious philosophy. James doesn’t seek institutional permission; she makes art relentlessly, owns the means of making, and lets the work sustain her community. She is a beloved presence in the cultural ecology of the Bronx. She is a multidisciplinary artist, manages a thriving community garden in her neighborhood of West Farms, and is the founder of BX200: Bronx Visual Artists Directory. She was raised in Brooklyn by Antiguan parents and has lived in the Bronx for decades.
In times of resurgent fascism and attacks on progressive education, James does what the moment demands of her: She makes work. James’s practice — encompassing painting, illustration, and sculpture — weaves together themes of race, gender, class, history, and spirituality with clarity. Among her most poignant contributions is the ongoing American History series, which she began in 1999 after learning about the brutal 1998 killing of James Byrd. Jr., a Black man, by White supremacists in Texas. Byrd endured horrific torture; his killers chained him to a truck and dragged his body for three miles.
Two views of Laura James’s studio
Laura James’s painting “Not Even Past” (2024) in her Bronx studio
Two recent paintings from the American History series, “Not Even Past” and “Inheritance” (both 2024), are bold artistic interventions that directly resist recent right-wing backlash against critical race theory and teaching the history of racism in the United States. “Not Even Past” confronts the dismissive sentiment that Black people must simply “move on” from slavery and systemic racism. The titular allusion to the William Faulkner quote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” is made visceral by the painting’s brutal and unforgettable imagery.
A large tree stands at the center of the painting, its branches bearing the bodies of lynched Black people. Below, a dense pack of plain-clothed White spectators gathers on the right, while Ku Klux Klan members in pointed white robes stand to the left. One figure hangs from a branch, engulfed in flames. At the bottom of the composition, rows of gravestones bear the names of murdered Black people: Sandra Bland (1987–2015), Breonna Taylor (1993–2020), and Sonya Massey (1988–2024), among many others. Some names, like Trayvon Martin (1995–2012) and Tamir Rice (2002–14), are immediately recognizable to the public because their murders galvanized the movement for Black lives, while others like Lizzie Dur (1882–95), whose death did spark protest at the time, have faded from broader public memory.
At the top of the painting, scenes of police brutality unfold. A Black person lies wounded and dying on the street as an onlooker films, and another is shot several times while fleeing. A group of incarcerated men in black and white striped jumpsuits is chained together, while a guard holds a shotgun at their heads — a clear reference to chain gangs, groups of imprisoned people exploited for their labor. Nearby, a jail cell underscores how mass incarceration remains linked to these ongoing histories of racial oppression.
Photograph of Laura James’s painting “Inheritance” (2024) in her Bronx studio
In contrast to the outdoors scenes in “Not Even Past,” James’s “Inheritance” (2024) takes place within a domestic interior. A wealthy White family’s living room with light green walls becomes the site of a fraught racial encounter in the painting: Black people are laboring within the home while the White homeowners are at leisure. This work is part of James’s larger practice of representing Black women domestic workers to honor their labor and expose Black labor’s relationship with White leisure. The scene already evokes discomfort due to the racialized history of domestic work, but closer inspection reveals other disturbing details. The woman cleaning the window and the man tending the grandmother’s feet are shackled with a ball and chain, a man serving drinks wears a muzzle, and another woman, missing a foot, balances precariously on a chair to clean a mirror. These surrealist elements are rooted in histories of enslavement and technologies of abuse on the plantation, while the symbols of torture suggest slavery and its enduring legacy. The painting suggests that the past of exploited labor is not yet fully past. At the top of the canvas, wallpaper panels depict slave ship imagery, with Black bodies tightly arranged in the ship’s hold. We all inherit this scene of racialized domesticity, and James compels us to face it.
Laura James’s studio
Left: Detail view of Laura James’s studio; right: Laura James in her studio
James draws inspiration from folk art traditions rich in vibrant color and storytelling. Similar to Ethiopian devotional painting, her compositions feature multiple narrative scenes at once in different parts of the composition. James’s simplified figural forms, bright palette, communal scenes, and unapologetically political themes also align with the legacy of Mexican muralism. These visual storytelling strategies powerfully convey Black American histories and connect them to global struggles, making even the most painful narratives more accessible to broader publics.
Together, these paintings provide accessible entry points into conversations about race, memory, and justice that are actively being suppressed in our schools and institutions during the Trump era, making them ideal visual tools for resisting censorship and fostering critical education. Indeed, James speaks of her work with urgency: “The paintings serve as a record of what happened. And we do not want this to happen again.” She continues, “I do not have all the answers, but I refuse to look away. I am bearing witness to what happened.” Many of the scenes that James paints come directly from history books she reads, like Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa to Slavery to Emancipation (1997). As educational curricula are increasingly Whitewashed, James’s paintings insist on remembering and reckoning with the past as a living and necessary part of our history. These works serve as visual anchors for discussing the inextricability of anti-Blackness from US history. There can be no such thing as neutral painting in a world indelibly marked by racial violence.