Note: This is an expanded version of my essay published in November 2025. It contains a fuller review and more images.

Tawny Chatmon’s art would be well worth seeing for its sheer beauty alone. But come closer and look deeper: These pieces contain multiple levels and tell important stories.

Last fall, I had the opportunity for a private press tour, led by the artist herself, of Tawny Chatmon’s exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. I was not familiar with the work of this relatively young Black artist, and I found her work stunning in both its execution and content.

Tawny Chatmon, born in 1979 in Tokyo, Japan is a self-taught artist residing in Prince Georges County, Maryland. She began her career as a commercial and editorial photographer, before turning to fine art photography while documenting her father’s struggle with cancer. 

Tawny Chatmon’s work is difficult to classify. Her website describes her as a “photography based artist.” She begins her process with a photograph, taken by her, often of family members or friends, before placing it on a painted background and embellishing the image with other materials, such as gold, paint, or threads. To call her pieces mixed media is accurate, but falls short of indicating the complexity of the way the images are layered and the textures are deepened.  

At first look, the above image, What’s more American than Vanilla Ice Cream? appears to be a simple photograph of a beautiful Black woman reclining in a red, star-covered gown, savoring a vanilla ice cream cone. But look more closely at the soft-focus background: A pair of men carrying American flags (whose stars seem to have fallen off and adorn the woman’s
dress) advance from left to right. According to the artist, this image is based on an illustration she discovered in the Library of Congress depicting white men on their way to attack a Black farming community in the post-reconstruction South. Beneath that layer, we find what could be a detail from an Impressionist painting—the work, say, of Monet or Manet. So what in the beginning appears to be a lovely portrait is suddenly complicated by not one but two deeper layers of history.

It is the complex, multi-layered nature of this work that leads me to call it ekphrastic, albeit in a somewhat unconventional way. (“Ekphrasis” is a literary term that refers to a piece of writing that responds to a work in another medium, usually a piece of visual art.) For example, the ice cream cone is not simply a warm weather treat, it stands in for the historical role of Black chefs in creating and popularizing ice cream. Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef, James Hemings (who also brought macaroni and cheese to American tables), created recipes for ice cream that was served at Jefferson’s banquets. (In a typical act of erasure, Jefferson is often given credit for both culinary developments.) At that time, the dish was complicated and expensive to prepare so it was reserved for the upper class. But in the 1820s, Augustus Jackson, a Black chef who had worked for President James Monroe, left the White House and started making and selling a simplified version of ice cream. The confection thus became more available and popular and Jackson began to be known as “King Ice Cream.”

One has to dig deep to discover these contributions to American cuisine and these men are subjects of the erasure that Chatmon seeks to overcome in many of her pictures. This piece tells a story and comments on history. In itself that’s hardly unusual in visual art. But the layering that moves the viewer’s gaze back to historical racism and further to the history of European art, notorious for its frequent racist presentation or total omission of Black faces and bodies, itself provides a commentary on the history of Western art. Hence my suggestion that this work, as well as a number of her others, is ekphrastic.

It is in these actions that Chatmon fulfills both parts of the title of her exhibition: In order to create and preserve sanctuaries of truth, she must dissolve lies, lies about history, about racial difference and white supremacy. Equally she takes on the necessity of revealing the truth about Black achievement, Black presence in American history, and, above all, Black beauty.

I Am not Your Blackamoor (above) exemplifies the theme of Black beauty and also reveals much about Chatmon's techniques and brilliant—in both senses—use of materials. Once again, a photograph of a beautiful and enigmatic Black woman juxtaposed against an Impressionist sky is enhanced with other materials. The fringe on the woman’s hat is composed of actual cowrie shells (a traditional ornament in much African art) and gold thread. A further complication here is the use of the word “blackamoor,” both an old racist term for Black person and a style of decorative art that uses stylized images of dark-skinned human figures.

The theme of beauty is further depicted in images of the artist’s children. We Hold Her Sacred depicts Chatmon’s teenage daughter, richly dressed and facing the viewer with a wary, almost defiant gaze, daring us to judge her as anything other than beautiful. Atop her head rests a crown of what appear to be golden laurels, suggesting poetry. Another suggestive element is the light that spreads over part of her face, implying growing enlightenment. And a final complicating and ironic element is delivered by the title itself. On first look, one assumes that the girl is what is being held scared. But a closer look reveals that she is holding a “mammy” figure, a classic racist image. By including this figure, Chatmon reclaims and negates the image, removing the aura of racism it otherwise carries. This reclamation seems particularly critical now in the face of a rising tide of White Supremacy and attempts by the current presidential administration to whitewash American history. (Chatmon collects racist figurines, toys, advertising images, et al., some of which are displayed in the exhibition.)

Depicted in Let Him Grow (below), the artist’s young son looks out at the viewer with a solemn, confident expression. Aside from the boy’s beautifully rendered face and hair, the only other visual element is some sort of cloth around his neck, suggesting a hoodie or a sweater. This piece is both powerful and poignant, implying that the boy’s future is yet to be written and implicating the viewer (“let him grow”) in his development.

One entire section of the show is devoted to food and, as with the image of the woman eating ice cream. rectifies the omission of Black creators and cultivators. Inverting racist tropes, Economic Heritage (below) depicts a beautiful Black female in a lush setting holding a watermelon. Besides the ironic nod to the racist trope of the lazy, watermelon-eating “darky,” this piece reminds us that watermelon, like many other staples, was brought to America by enslaved Africans. Further, in the aftermath of the Civil War, cultivating watermelon brought economic rewards to Black farmers, hence the title, and sometimes drew attacks by whites threatened by the possibility of Black equality, as shown in “What’s More American Than Vanilla Ice Cream?”

This exhibition contains far more than one review can possibly cover. The show runs through March 8, 2026. Visit Chatmon’s website to see more images and learn about the artist.

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Tawny Chatmon is a self-taught artist based in Maryland. Through a layered process of photography, painting, and hand -embellishment, she creates works that honor and celebrate the beauty of Black childhood and the Black family, while at times confronting historical misrepresentation and erasure.