Up close, glass bead, wire, and thread intermesh through squiggles and circles; at times, their translucency invites nearby light and shadows, and moments of the bare wall underneath to peek through. Step back, however, and you’ll notice figures. Towards the tapestry’s top are two seated figures, one in yellow, another in maroon. Towards the middle is a larger yellow figure, with facial features outlined in black thread next to another smaller mostly forest-green colored figure, encircled in gold. Seen at various vantages, Untitled Fairy Tale (from the Graphic Novel Series), 2019–20 invites the viewer to ask: who are these figures? What can we learn from their stories? 

“These beads are like working with liquid color,” Joyce J. Scott says, quoted in the adjacent label. “It’s having light pass through. It’s having shadows that are colored fall on a surface. It’s my being able to almost see through something . . . and actually transform these little circles of light . . . into some kind of matrix.” This label also introduces Untitled Fairy Tale next to four other beaded tapestries, which each iteratively swirl with color, figure, translucency, and storytelling. For example, in Of Africa, 2023, a larger mostly cream-colored work, a woven pink Africa is surrounded by glittery brown twine underneath which at least a dozen faces and figures exist, as if to ask: what lights and people make up the continent?

Over one hundred fifty works comprised Joyce J. Scott: Walk A Mile in My Dreams, an exhibition that ran a few months at Seattle Art Museum (SAM). A “career retrospective” of Scott (b. 1948), the Baltimore-born artist, this exhibition was co-organized with Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) where a previous iteration opened on March 24, 2024. The exhibition’s curators were Cecilia Wichmann, BMA’s associate curator of Contemporary Art, and Catharina Manchanda; SAM’s Jon and Mary Shirley curator of Modern and Contemporary Art; with additional support from Leslie Rose, Scott’s curatorial research assistant. Across forms (quilts, beaded tapestries, glass sculptures, jewelry, installation, posters, and a theatrical script), works often displayed a luminescent rainbow or kaleidoscope-like engagement with color.

Section titles written in orange thematically organized viewing, including “Sharecropping,” “The Living Archive,” “Peyote Stitch,” “Fashioning Consciousness,” “Messing with Stereotypes,” “Bearing Witness,” “Better Out Than In,” and  “None Are Free Until All Are Free.” Underneath most were a quote from Scott. For example, under “Ancestry and Progeny” Scott’s quote read, “Each person is a complex combination of everything that ever touched them, and that they ever touched.” This format thematically held together the exhibition’s diverse forms through Scott’s ethnographic voice which further anchored exhibition themes of Black feminist aesthetics, generational memory, spirituality, anti-Black racism, and white supremacy.

Many works were serial, whether or not named as part of a series. Hung next to other quilts Three Generations Quilt I, 1983 had glittery silver thread jutting out from an orange backing, emphasizing the (generationally) dimensional aspects of quilts. In another beadwork tapestry, I Call Her Name, 2023, intricate beadwork across rainbow colors coheres into a large hair-bonnet shaped sculpture. The power of being adorned spotlighted Virgin of Guadalupe (necklace), 2009 where three skulls danced with a red devil-like figure, and Joyce’s Necklace, 1978–85 filled with charms and figure portraits, described as a “talisman” for the artist.  With spiritual, psychic, and historical relevance, the Mammie Wada, 1981 series of dolls—made from leather, fabric, crab claws (that evoke the ocean floor), yarn, synthetic hair, found photographs, and other materials—were inspired by the African diasporic Mami Wata figure, and Black afterlives of the transatlantic slave trade. And sitting among other beaded watermelon sculptures, Saint Watermelon’s (1994) bright red, green, and white beads captured light that further animated the dark-brown colored limbs that seemingly crawled out from the fruit. 

Phallic sculptures including Flutist (2011), Black Cuddling Dick I (1995), and Black Cuddly Dick III (1995) depicted neo-classically styled white figurines holding beaded black penises, and highlighted colonial antiblack sexual violence, and humor. Adjacent to these was Mamie/Penis (2011) (of the Still Funny series) which adjoined a found “Black Mammy” figurine with a beaded pink-colored “white” penis. Curators thoughtfully dealt with this difficult exhibition material that nevertheless told a quintessential American history. For example, description for the entrance to a portioned off gallery with works on lynching asked the audience to “please enter with mindful awareness and deep care.” Other notable works included an annotated script and photographs from Scott’s 2006 Theatre Project (Baltimore) production, Walk a Mile in My Drawers, Birthing Chair 1987 and Procreation (necklace) 1994, beaded sculptures on the historical conditions and promises of Black life. 

Viewing art in SAM often feels staid. The museum, first founded in 1906, now has a flagship location that occupies the first four floors of a sixteen-story office building, which opened in 2007. But Joyce J. Scott: Walk A Mile in My Dreams brought vibrancy, color, life, depth, history, and provocations to the fourth-floor galleries. In the last room, the “Let’s Weave” section allowed viewers to weave multicolored yarn on an oversize loom. This action continued to highlight how Scott’s work transforms kaleidoscopic colors to touch racism, Black feminist expressive forms, and American life.