ARTIST TALK: LAVA THOMAS

Lava Thomas’ work explores the events, figures, and movements that inform and shape our individual and collective histories. Through an oeuvre that spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, her practice centers around notions of visibility, resilience, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma, and oppression.

Thomas is from Los Angeles, CA. She studied at UCLA’s School of Art Practice and received a BFA from California College of the Arts. Thomas has been awarded residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Kala Art Institute, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She is a recipient of the Lucas Artists Fellowship in Visual Arts, a Getty Foundation Grant, a Peninsula Community Foundation Fellowship, and the Joan Mitchell Grant for Painters and Sculptors.

Her work has been exhibited at various institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C; the California African American Museum in Los Angeles; the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, CA; the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa, CA; the International Print Center in New York; the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, CA; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco; the United States Consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa; the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, CA; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Thomas is represented by Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.