Ebony Y. Rhodes
Artist | Philosopher
SOLO EXHIBITION: GEOVERITAS
Saturday • November 9, 2024
4 - 8pm
Casa Artali
855 NE 76th St.
Miami, FL 33138
My Birth Place Is Here (2024), oil on canvas, 63" x 48"
GEOVERITAS is the debut solo exhibition by artist and philosopher Ebony Y. Rhodes. It showcases her process to visually conceptualize the philosophical underpinnings of her recently published treatise The Geoveritas: Language of the Living. Geo-Veritas, a word created by Rhodes, combines the Greek prefix geo- meaning earth and the Latin veritas- meaning truth. Central to her work is examining the geometric relationship between rocks, plants, and people as a paradoxically simplified yet profound and expansive locus from which she recasts economic narratives about society.
The exhibition also includes new works on paper and miniature oil paintings that feature landscapes, dreamscapes, and portraits which shed light on the broader context of the artist’s life. Excerpts from her writings are embedded in several of the large paintings, which together with the centerpiece work – a large painting depicting Rhodes herself in a reflective and solitary posture – offer a comprehensive invitation into her unique and sincere devotion to logos.
Select Works
About the Artist
Ebony Y. Rhodes is an artist and philosopher who lives and works in Miami, Florida. A native of Fairfax County, Virginia, she holds a BA in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of Miami. She is the author of The Geoveritas: Language of the Living, an experimental text which was also exhibited at MoMAZoZo in Carrizozo, New Mexico (2021) and received an Honorable Mention for the Emerging Writers Fellowship with the Miami Book Fair (2022). Her artwork was featured in Genius Species, a group exhibition highlighting Black womanhood at The Arts and Recreation Center, Opa-locka, Florida (2023). She is a contributing writer to the forthcoming Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Backdoor by Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York (2024).
Artist Statement
Rhodes paints as a mode of experimentation into the nature of language and conceptualization. Formally trained as an analytic philosopher, her brushstrokes are both geometric and calligraphic. Her paintings and works on paper are deeply expressionist, while teetering between abstraction and figuration.
The consistent use of blue and white gestural shape making is a symbolic reference to classic architectural blueprints. To view the paintings as a series is to experience the emergence of the artist’s unique language code, an expression of the philosophy at the heart of The Geoveritas text, which she authored.
While the paintings are visual art objects that can be “read,” The Geoveritas text from which they arise is a work that must be absorbed through nonlinear spatial imagining. Both are experimentations at the intersection between the written word and the visual symbol.