Jade Montserrat's Drawings Explore Ambiguous Bodily Consciousness at Bosse & Baum

Jade Montserrat's exhibition 'In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens' at Bosse & Baum in London from June 5 to July 24, 2021, presented drawings that navigate Afro-diasporic subjectivity through fragmented bodies and dreamlike landscapes. Works like 'In Tune with the Infinite' (2015) feature a hand-shaped rock emerging from the ocean, while 'Feet, Spectator' (2016) depicts feet with vultures and sea anemone-like growths. The recurring groin motif, as seen in 'Torso: Reef-knot' (2020–21), combines celebrations of female sexuality with unsettling references to objectification and dispossession, with gold cage-like materials cladding Black skin alluding to the Middle Passage. Textual elements often begin with 'Her body...', as in 'Her body moved through darkness to dawn' (2017–21), where words shiver amidst cellular forms, creating ambiguity between hope and suffering. Montserrat's art resists clear interpretation, using a joyous palette and balletic effects alongside discomfiting symbols to evoke both utopianism and bodily precarity. The exhibition was reviewed in the September 2021 issue of ArtReview, highlighting how the artist's rendering of letters and motifs suggests multiple, conflicting meanings without fixed resolution.