“L’Appel de la Lumière” (The Call of the Light) is a modest but illuminating exhibition charting the expansive oeuvre of Mildred Thompson (1936–2003), an African American feminist artist whose eclectic practice anticipates queer formalism. Thompson’s work was shaped by her self-imposed exile (notably, a brief stint in Paris in the 1980s), which expanded the artist’s inquiries into scientific concepts like quantum physics and cosmology, fields that would influence her creative output for the next twenty years. The exhibition’s title derives from one of two yellowish oil pastels from 1982. Made in Paris, they mark a detour from her earlier work and set the tone for the various series on display.
Thompson principally sought refuge in Europe after her encounters with racism and sexism in New York City in the early 1960s, but the artist avoided making direct political statements in her work, preferring to focus on the metaphysical complexities of the universe and concepts of emancipatory space. It was in Paris that the artist began to experiment with cosmic imagery, a theme manifest in works such as Pleiades I, 1988, a watercolor of the star cluster dancing in symmetry. Two later paintings Advancing Impulses, 1997, and Radiation Explorations 8, 1994, depict interstellar life with impasto swirls and stormy lines, each bursting with movement and color. While Zylo-Probe, ca. 1975, from her signature “Wood Pictures” relief series, predates her Paris years, its rhythmic compositional structure in natural wood tones sheds light on her at times category-defying production. Taken together, the works of “L’Appel de la Lumière” successfully evince how invisible forces can materialize, uncovering the magical interrelations of aesthetics and science.
— Jennifer Teets