JaymesJorslingHubCity&Posterity

Hub City

During Jaymes Jorslings’ residency with Calabar Gallery at coLAB Arts in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the artist engaged deeply with the city’s layered history a chronicle of resistance, flight, resilience, and, at times, unexpected prosperity shaped by formerly enslaved people in the region. New Brunswick, known as “Hub City,” occupies a symbolic midpoint between New York and Philadelphia. Its Raritan River once served as both a port where enslaved people were trafficked and a route along the Underground Railroad. This startling coexistence of captivity and liberation forms the foundation of Hub City, Jaymes’ multidisciplinary project.

Touch, Feel, Reach

Time Out

Posterity

Posterity is an exhibition born from the upper right corner of Ascension, a pivotal work in the Hub City series. That section of the painting gestures toward the present day and beyond as the living outcome of collective trials and tribulations within the African American experience, reaching back to 1619. It represents what endured, what was protected, and what was intentionally planted: Black freedom, Black love, Black family, Black joy, and Black growth. These are both the reasons for survival and the seeds carried forward. From this foundation emerges Posterity, a series of paintings that centers contemporary Black love as inheritance made visible.

About Jaymes Jorsling

Jaymes Jorsling Biography

Jaymes Jorsling is a Visual Artist, Writer, and Actor. Born deaf in one ear, and an African-American child of immigrants, his art is testimony of personal pursuits, including struggles and triumphs.

Currently in residence with Kean University, and recently with Calabar Gallery at coLAB Arts, Jaymes’ began his career as a visual artist when, at 12 years old, he was awarded an art scholarship at Brooklyn Museum. Also trained at Pratt Institute, he work lives in many private collections across the country.

His play (A)loft Modulation ran off-Broadway and was nominated for many awards. He wrote the script for Grammy nominated Gerald Clayton’s sprawling oeuvre, Piedmont Blues: Search for Salvation, which is currently touring the world.

He’s also an actor of stage (New York and Regional Theatres), film (lead in Randall Dottin’s Academy Award Winning short, A -Alike), television (The Wire, Law & Order, The Affair, etc.) and voice (NewBalance, Nike, Champs Sports, Dunkin’ Donuts, Verizon, Home Depot, Ford, Close - up, etc).

Based in Brooklyn, Jaymes is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of The City University Of New York and has received fellowships, grants, and commissions, from Duke University, Brown University, Ucross Foundation, Pratt Institute, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Brooklyn Museum, and BRIC Studios, among others.

Jaymes Jorsling

Statement

I’ve spent countless hours using acrylic and canvas to explore universal paradigms like patriotism, family, loss, pride, joy, legacy, and fear, often highlighting nuances specific to my experience, the Black experience

Using many, thick layers of paint to create a variety of textures, I blend black, silhouetted realism with vibrant, colorful abstraction to ensure the context, or background, remains as important to the eye as the primary subject. My work often contains secondary themes or figures like ancestors or spirits, mimicking the complexity and cumulative nature of the human condition. The bright colors are a tribute to the batik and madras textiles from my Caribbean heritage, and I often use West African Adinkra symbols in celebration of my African ancestry.

To evoke a sense of journey through obstacles and lessons, I use colors that sharply contrast, prioritizing unique blends that can never be recreated as homage to the ephemeral, forward-motion of life. Sometimes, I leave a portion of canvas blank to represent the forgotten, unknown, or unexamined thoughts, people, feelings, institutions or relationships. Sometimes I integrate fabrics and papers to symbolize the parts of ourselves that we don’t get to choose but must seek to understand (like race).

My overarching thematic focus for the last few years has been “the intergenerational joy of Black family.” My goal is to counteract the often weaponized and fetishized imagery and storytelling of Black intergenerational trauma. The truth of our trauma must be examined (and I have dedicated lots of time to exploring this in my art), but we must also examine our joy. This is how I use my art as a tool for social justice.

In my play, (A)Loft Modulation, an artist declares, “The highest form of art is intellect, the highest form of intellect is art! Only art can render our infinite lexicon of words, of language, inadequate for describing emotions! Art is pursuit! Worth all sacrifices, any labor, health, life even!” I wrote that because I believe it and I live it. I hope my work sparks both self-analysis and conversations within communities.