Repetition is a guiding principle for much of Shanequa Gay’s work that creates patterns with repeated images — like her signature indigo toile schema.
In Gateway to the South at Jackson Fine Art, Gay reclaims the toile de Jouy, once a symbol of American colonialism. Her indigo patterns — installed as wallpaper in the space — sprawl behind large works of a world captured by the lens of her great-grandfather James “Papa Jim” Battle, a second-generation railroad worker. Her works collapse, recreate and transform his photographs of everyday life in Dallas, Georgia, in the 1920s and 1930s.
