I Pick Up My Life, Tammie Rubin
Galleri Urbane welcomes back Austin-based artist Tammie Rubin for her debut solo show with the gallery, I Pick up My Life. She presents an exhibition surrounding Black Americans' metaphysical, physical, and spiritual relocation. Following her inclusion in the gallery's 2020 winter group exhibition, Rubin brings together family images, coded symbols, and historical maps to visually contextualize The Great Migration, referencing the first line of One-Way Ticket by Langston Hughs in the show’s title.
Her conical porcelain sculptures from the Always & Forever (forever, ever) series, shown at Untitled Miami 2021, are simple at first glance: caution cones, snow cone cups, and funnels. However, the blue and white stippled objects reference hoods worn by groups such as the Catholic Brotherhood of the Nazarenes, Ku Klux Klan, cultural images of wizards and witches, dunce caps, various African headdresses and Mardi Gras festival costumes. "It's this idea of codifying power," she says of conical hoods and the capirote—both "foreboding and absurd." Pulling pageantry used to denote power and intelligence to ignominy, she transforms the function of ceramics in the contemporary art space by placing migratory maps and visual data upon their surfaces.
Seemingly arbitrary geometric shapes within a mural are symbols said to be used in Underground Railroad quilts to communicate messages to enslaved individuals. This recreation of Monkey Wrench, North Star, Shoofly, her recent 2022 public project in Austin, TX, include painted motifs which were used to call to gather people and prepare, show the allyship found in a location, and with the North Star remind the people of the path to freedom.
Recalling her 2022 installation at Project Row Houses in Houston, TX, Harmony, Comfort, Convenience, Round 53: The Curious Case of Critical Race…Theory?, Rubin fills a confined space with stake flags and lines a broad wall with collaged prayer fans—typically found in churches of the south to commemorate lives. In this exhibition, she repeatedly urges the viewer to acknowledge past and present systems, their implications, and mass movements in pursuit of freedom.
A collection of various media, Rubin's components weave together a range of associations, intertwining history and storytelling, redefining the use of an object and underscoring the magnitude of its being multifunctional. The inherited symbolism in these diverse forms and implied meanings encourage a range of emotions. I Pick Up My Life is an ethnographic experience of Black Americans and a migration story that spans centuries.