MARCELLOUS LOVELACE

Artist Statement / Bio: Marcellous Lovelace the Afro Urban Indigenous Folk Artist (AFRICAN BLACKNESS LIBERATION)

 

The art form that I practice is painting in mixed media with found materials. I paint from my experience living on the South Side of Chicago and living in poverty-stricken America. I use found objects throughout the world as references to my surroundings in my work. Not only that, but I work on everything from old found pieces of paper, garbage cans, tires, and mattresses to used construction material found from torn-down buildings. My travels and growing up in Chicago, a diversely segregated environment, influence struggle and pain. I learned to call myself an Afro-Urban Indigenous Folk Artist, a term that reflects both ancestral memory and contemporary survival. The tragedies that occur in my city help me reinterpret the oppression on all surfaces.

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This approach aligns with long-standing African artistic traditions in which material carries spirit, history, and function. In many West and Central African cultures such as the Yoruba, Dogon, Kongo, and Akan art was never separate from daily life, struggle, or resistance. Objects were repurposed, layered, and transformed into vessels of memory, ritual, and survival. Like the Nkisi figures of the Kongo, which embedded nails, metals, and found materials to activate power and testimony, my surfaces absorb the trauma, endurance, and lived reality of Black life in America. My work also echoes the legacy of African American artists such as Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Elizabeth Catlett, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar, who used discarded materials as historical evidence against erasure, poverty, and racial violence.

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I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago in a community called Roseland. This segregated, poverty-stricken environment helped me to develop over 400 images a year over the last 30 years of my life. My environment is so negative it helps me to create beauty from this struggle. I paint because it’s the only thing that feels good after feeling like I’m trapped in a world that has no hope. This process reflects the tradition of Black creative resistance, where art functions as both survival and testimony similar to the role of spirituals, blues, Hip Hop, muralism, and quilt-making in Black history. Like the Gee’s Bend quilters, who transformed scraps into visual language, my work reclaims what society discards and turns it into evidence of presence, intelligence, and humanity.

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I also have lived in a place in Chicago known as Terror Town on the South Side of Chicago that is also highly populated with gang activity due to the fact the city really doesn't care about what happens to the underprivileged citizens in the city. Terror Town is near 75th and Exchange off of South Shore Drive. In this area I painted a large portion of my work in a residence that was controlled by drug addicts and bombarded by roaches. Many of these pests and addicts ended up being a part of my work. This reality mirrors the historical neglect faced by Black communities since the Great Migration, redlining, and urban disinvestment policies that deliberately isolated Black neighborhoods while extracting labor and culture. Much like Jacob Lawrence documented migration and struggle through narrative form, my work documents lived conditions through material truth.

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For most of my adult life I have worked on art regardless of the situation, and I always will because these colorful problems help me to continue to see through the blight. This practice is an act of resistance, education, and spiritual grounding rooted in the same lineage that produced artists such as Romare Bearden, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hammons, and contemporary Afro-surrealists who confront systemic oppression through layered symbolism. My work is not separate from Black history; it is a continuation of it, a living archive of struggle, survival, and creative intelligence shaped by ancestral resilience and modern urban reality.

 

About

 

Born Chicago, IL 1975; attended The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN; 

 

Select Shows -  2025 Phoenix, AZ, 2023 Greater Phoenix Economic Council Team, Phoenix, AZ, 2023 Biko70 Colors In Black, Solar Babies Art Institute, Phoenix, AZ, 2022 - 2024 Sleeping With the Artists FOUND:RE Contemporary, Phoenix, AZ, 2022, The Hue #biko70, Solar Babies Art Institute, Phoenix AZ, 2022 Exposed Emotions In Color – Solo Show, Phoenix, AZ, 2021 Removal of Color Exhibition, Los Angeles, CA, 2020 Modified Arts, Road Show, Phoenix, AZ, 2019 Modified Arts, 12X12, Phoenix, AZ, 2018 City of Los Angles, Los Angeles, CA, 2017 University Art Gallery, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM , 2017 WBAI Benefit, Chesterfield Gallery, New York, Ny, 2017 we transfer show ello.co (Internet), 2016 #Biko70 Lumumba Blacker Than Space / Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), 2015 The Hue #biko70 / HW Chicago Public Library (Chicago, IL), 2015 The Black Artists on Art (BAOA) Legacy Exhibition (Novato, CA), 2015 The Artivist Rises: an exhibition honoring protest art (New York, NY), 2015 Brooks Museum / Artist as Activist (Memphis, TN), 2015 ( ( parentheses ) ) ) Gallery /Summer Show  (Halifax, Canada), 2015 The Black Artists on Art Legacy Exhibit Oak Stop (Oakland, CA), 2015 Black History Month Group Show / Elee Mosynary Gallery (Chicago, IL), 2015 Black History Exhibit Africa International House (Chicago, IL), 2015 Re: sent work. Summer Group Show Parentheses (Halifax, Nova Scotia), 2015 I dream of … Exhibition / Incline Gallery (San Francisco, CA), 2015 I dream of … Exhibition / ArTik (Freiburg, Germany), 2014 Stigmart10 / VIDEOFOCUS Biennale College, Venezia, Italy,2014 International Mail Exhibition /  Q Gallery, Brainerd, MN2014 6th Annual Post Card Show /Auer Center For Arts and Culture , Fort Wayne, IN, 2014 I dream of … Exhibition / Incline Gallery  San Francisco, CA, 2014 I dream of … Exhibition / ArTik , Freiburg, Germany 2014 Exposed Emotion: Broken Narratives / Kishwaukee College Gallery ,Malta, IL, 2014 All of Us or None (Poster Show)  / American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia, PA, 2012 Du Sable Museum, Chicago, IL, 2013 Gallery Seven-Nine Co / Chicago's 18th Annual Artist Month, Chicago, IL, 2013 Elephant Room, Chicago, IL, 2013 Voices Warehouse Gallery , Dubuque, IA , 2013 Evens Odds MEMEZ4LULZ show, St Petersburg, Fl, Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2012 Stones Throw Records, Los Angeles, Ca, 2012 Life over Aids 2nd Group Show at Caritas Village, Memphis,Tn, 2012 Exposed Emotions In Color – Solo Show, Memphis,Tn, 2012 Exhale Unlimited: Twitter Art Exhibit, Los Angeles, Ca, 2011 Silver Room Block Party Art Showing, Chicago, IL, 2011 Billboard Project, New Orleans, LA, 2011 A.I.R. Gallery 4x6 Show, New York, NY, 2011 Frick and Frock Art Show, Nancy, France, 2010 Zombie Resurrection of Fela Kuti Group Show, San Francisco, CA, 2010 Life Over Aids Group Show at Caritas Village, Memphis, TN, 2008 Fall into The Arts (Illinois Wesleyan University), Normal, IL, 2006 San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, 2005 Headlands Group Show, San Mateo, CA, 2005 The University Of Memphis African Diaspora, Memphis, TN, 2003 Griffin Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2002 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2001 The Museum Of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL

 

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