Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning

by Alvia Wardlaw (Interviewer), Jamal Cyrus (Artist), Steven Matijcio (Foreword, Contributor), Grace Deveney (Contributor), Ciarán Finlayson (Contributor), Jamillah James (Contributor), Ana Tuazon (Contributor)

The first full-length monograph of Houston-based visual artist Jamal Cyrus (born 1973), this publication features an overview of Cyrus’ practice of cobbling modern artifacts that trace the evolution of Black identity as it migrates across the African Diaspora, Middle Passage, jazz age and civil rights movements from the 1960s to now.

Published to accompany Cyrus’ first career survey exhibition at the Blaffer Art Museum, the catalog includes materially diverse and conceptually charged textile-based pieces, assemblages, performances, installations, paintings and works on paper produced in the past two decades, including his ongoing Pride Records installation series.

Together, these multidisciplinary artworks demonstrate Cyrus’ commemoration, translation and reactivation of sociopolitical struggles in African American history―forging a revised chronicle of histories, hybridity and redemption.