Demirtri Broxton: Ancestral Echoes

My new body of work centers upon ancestors whose names and stories I don’t fully know. Most of them are soldiers who served in WWI. They fought to support a country that would continue to deny them full citizenship and equal rights. – Demetri Broxton

Time lays waste to our fragile fiber of ancestral connections. As Demetri Broxton looks through an archive of family photos, members whom he doesn’t know, and relationships he can only hazard a guess, he begins to weave speculative pictorial stories that inform his ancestral template of time. Those who might have guided his investigation departed long ago; thus, conjecture and imagination are left to form his historical tapestry of those who came before. Selected family photos dating from both Great Wars are printed on Japanese sateen cotton, a smooth, luxurious substrate, whereupon Broxton adorns his family with resurrected life replete with color, texture, finery, and respect. Family members’ hardships and joys may be lost to their future heir, but America’s racist politics and history are not; thus, Broxton has posthumously provided an important window for Black Speculative Fantasy in Afro-futurism.

This is Demetri Broxton’s second solo exhibition in Los Angeles. His first exhibition with PSG was in 2018, where he debuted embellished boxing gloves, unfolding a complex narrative centered on the mythic stature of Black boxers, from Jack Johnson to his grandfather, who was a boxer during WWII. Broxton’s sculpture, whether gloves, tapestries, or robes, are laced with amulets of power, transgression, healing, peril, and protection; they all tell stories of struggle and triumph.