There were dozens of them, dating as far back as seven generations ago.
I would take the film and develop it in my little darkroom in middle school, Hamilton told me.
I was obsessed with it as a kid.
Allison Janae Hamilton,Self-portrait,2025.
Surrounded by all these family photos, she says theres a haunting, ancestral thrust that infuses her practice.
It comes not just from the people in the photographs, but from the land.
Most of the photos were taken on her familys farm in rural Tennessee.
Allison Janae Hamilton,Celestine (Florida Storm),2024. Still 045.
My experience of Black womanhood is really bound up with the land.
My aunts all hunted and fished and farmed, and I grew up around that culture, she says.
Which is not often the first assumption that pops into mind when people think about Black womanhood.
Allison Janae Hamilton,Constellation in Blue and Red, with Clouds,2025.
The theme is sort of like vertical landscapes: the soil and then the stars, she says.
The song was published in 1928the year the Okeechobee Hurricane brought even more devastation to the area.
The Okeechobee storm especially impacted Black migrant workers, thousands of whom were killed and buried in unmarked graves.
Allison Janae Hamilton,Floral Mask in Bronze,2024.
The three large-scale paintings Hamilton made for the show again reference the night sky.
When I came back to the studio after having my childher daughter is now twoeverything felt so new.
My life felt new.
Allison Janae Hamilton,Deborah,2025.
Everything was a learning curve.
So I got back to the studio and said, I think Im going to paint now.
The paintings have stillness to them, a reverence for the antiquity of the cosmos.
She started collecting the masks and using them as props in photographic works.
Eventually, she saw them as their own standalone artworks, and her embellishments grew more elaborate.
The masks were kind of stand-ins for a body, she says.
The world is dizzying, especially lately.
We are on shaky ground.
In the fight for a better world, we must also look up.
