Poetically conveying clues to her photographs’ complex themes, “Planes,” the title of the Deana Lawson show at The Underground Museum, connotes levels of existence; walls of rooms; and images’ physical flatness.

Deana Lawson, “Planes,” 2018, installation view, The Underground Museum.

Most of the Rochester-born, New York-based artist’s large-scale inkjet prints portray working-class black people inside humble abodes. At first glance, they impart the impromptu effect of snapshots casually taken of friends or family for an old-school picture album. Closer observation indicates that Lawson’s scenes are highly staged, with planned compositions and figurative gestures imbued with painterly symbolism. The partially clad woman in Eternity (2017), for instance, recalls Ingres’ Odalisque as well as various cultures’ fertility goddess sculptures. The more one looks, the more Lawson’s furnished interior environments begin to seem as mysterious and intriguing as the people within them. Lighting, palette and composition imbue mundane details, such as a gold clock or a patterned couch, with dreamlike qualities.

Deana Lawson, “Planes,” 2018, installation view, The Underground Museum.

For her photo-shoots, Lawson invites interesting people she meets by chance in public to model inside their homes, often for compositions she has already envisioned. Her subjects’ real-life relationships often diverge from what her photos suggest. It’s difficult to visually deduce where any given photo was taken; some are from America, others from her travels in Africa. Her figures frequently appear before corners seeming to symbolize existential junctures. With mythical-sounding titles such as Sons of Cush (2017) and Soweto Queen (2017), her fancifully juxtaposed scenes read as wistful endeavors to trace connections among descendants of sundered African peoples across time and space.

Deana Lawson, “Planes,” 2018, installation view, The Underground Museum.

Hints of Afrofuturism appear in Messier 81, Return of the Dove (2018). Suggesting spiritual transcendence of earthly existence, this piece features a small Polaroid portrait collaged onto a large distorted photo of a celestial galaxy.

Deana Lawson, “Planes,” 2018, installation view, The Underground Museum.

Installation components enrich the mystical yet homey undercurrents of Lawson’s photos. Healing crystals glitter in various corners against plum-painted gallery walls. Inside a carpeted alcove, an untitled digital film loop resonates with themes in her stills. Wall montages of drugstore-printed photos, ranging from gruesome death scenes to family portraits, collectively form engrossing esoteric totems to myriad personal histories. Through her subtly fantastic photographic juxtapositions, Lawson potently connects divergent symbolic fragments of African diasporas.

Deana Lawson, “Planes,” October 13, 2018 – February 17, 2019, at The Underground Museum, 3508 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA  90018. https://theunderground-museum.org/

All images courtesy of the artist and The Underground Museum.