Willie Bonner: Pre-Existing Condition

February 1, 2025 - June 8, 2025

My artwork intends to engage the viewer and create an extended dialogue regarding the culture of African American people both historically and in contemporary society.  However, in its essence, its objective is to transcend language. Just as jazz is indigenous to America, more specifically, Black America, with its roots in African rhythms and dances, so too is my painting a reflection of indigenous African American culture and experience within the larger American culture. My art is not about gaining social acceptance in the larger American society, but rather an allegory of what it means to be black in postmodern America.

The meaning is multi-layered and multi-cultural, seeking to engage the audience through the content of its social applicability as well as the complex “rhythmic” patterns that exist in the work itself.  Within the iconography of my work, psychological dimensions emerge reflecting my personal experience of Black American culture, which requires a break with the ruling hegemony that has a hold on images of the black body and experience. Maintaining an identity within a framework of double consciousness is a bitter-sweet taste of reality – feeling as an “other” from mainstream America while evolving toward a new identity.