SKIN DEEP (1)
By:
October 5, 2026
One in a series of posts profiling the artists of the Black Cherry Lane: Presence exhibition, which honors the ancestors and descendants of Cherry Lane Cemetery, a burial ground for free and formerly-enslaved people which is now itself buried under a parking lot, and which the artists are imagining a new life and legacy for.
SKIN DEEP: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | JEROME LAGARRIGUE | MARY EDWARDS | BEVERLY Y. SMITH | TIM OKAMURA | THOMAS DOYLE | YELENA TYLKINA | TAHA CLAYTON | GREG SHEA | LAZARUS NAZARIO
Jerome Lagarrigue’s paintings are flares on the retina of memory, trails of the trials and passions that flash across the firmament of our lives.
Emerging from the ferment of modern media and elusive memory, his images piece themselves together from likeness, imagined essence, scraps and swipes of color and decisive structure, ephemeral impression and concrete vision.
He provided the Black Cherry Lane: Presence exhibition with one of its most-reproduced images, Distant Relative #18, a transmission from the ether of remembrance and persevering spirits. I spoke with him about the inspirations converging in this work:
HILOBROW: Could you describe your artistic inquiry — I see themes of memory, of lost legacy, and of trying to reach through the void to reclaim those kinds of things.
LAGARRIGUE: I have a number of recurring themes that I go to; it all stems originally from portraiture, and eventually… I work from photographs that I come across and collect, and typically never stick to the photograph, and I allow myself to reimagine certain contexts; just to give you an idea, I used to look at old black-and-white vintage photographs, and sepia-toned, and imagine them in color. So therefore the work almost becomes an abstract practice, of allowing certain feelings to evoke certain colors. And then I started imagining a series titled Distant Relatives where I’m looking at old photographs of people who sort of look like me from the 1700s on; I was like, what if we were part of the same family somehow, and started exploring that theme. And this particular painting is called Distant Relative #18 because it’s the 18th one I’ve done, but each one is like [tailored] to a story; this one’s really about erasure and coverups. Which tied into the whole scenario of the burial site having been paved over, so the figure is looking up as if he’s… first there’s a sense of dignity, but also [of] a spirit coming out of the ground.
HILOBROW: It’s almost… portraiture of the absent.
LAGARRIGUE: Absolutely. I don’t like too much the word “ghost,” because it could have a negative connotation, but it’s really about spirit, and remnants of what’s been tried to be covered up. And I usually think of these things when I’m, at times, sadly, in a cemetery. This energy. And that’s my attempt to paint that energy.
HILOBROW: It seems to almost come up to date in terms of the antique atmospherics, the fact that this particular painting almost looks like a decaying video from the ’80s, which brings the flaws of an old photo up to date.
LAGARRIGUE: Yeah, there’s a certain static, and I try to paint with a distance, kind of like as if you looked at an old Polaroid that’s been through the test of time, it creates this distance, or old frames that have [damages] on them — without falling into the hipster-y thing of being vintage-looking [laughs], but definitely. So it’s purposely trying to create that distance. And the closeness to the subject that’s being painted.
HILOBROW: I love that tension between the remove and the intimacy.
LAGARRIGUE: Me too — that back and forth.
[Keep watching this space for profiles of all the creators contributing to Black Cherry Lane: Presence, and if you’re anywhere near Staten Island between October 1 and 25, come see what they have to reveal for yourself!]