More Beautiful than a Peacock

Lonnie Holley (b. 1950, Birmingham, Alabama) lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. Recent solo exhibitions include Lonnie Holley, UT Downtown Gallery, Knoxville (2023); If You Really Knew, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami (2023); What Have They Done with America, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2022); The Growth of Communication, Edel Assanti, London (2022); Coming from the Earth, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2022); The Influence of Images, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland (2021); Everything That Wasn’t White, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill (2021); Somewhere in a Dream I Got Lost: Works by Lonnie Holley, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem (2019); and The Weight of Everything, James Fuentes, New York, NY (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2023); Deep Horizons, Middlesbrough Institute of Art, Middlesbrough (2023); Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2022); The Art of Assemblage, NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale (2022); American South, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (2021); Forms of Life, Morán Morán, Los Angeles, CA (2020); and History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2018).

About the work

"The repetition of facial outlines in profile gives shape to the river of time, the forms and features that flow through his veins as DNA, yielding to the ancestors whose lives have gone before and who ‘work their mojo’ through him. Physical characteristics mark ancestral lines and familial relations—honouring both his Yoruba and Native American heritage—and, more expansively, the many faces outlined pay homage to unsung heroes whose contribution to the progress of humanity and the service of others deserves recognition." Gina Buenfeld-Murley, All Rendered Truth.