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USE WHAT YOU GOT is the debut solo-exhibition of works created by atiya jones. As a part of her “Self Avoidance Series (2020-),” these “brain maps” are considered by the artist to be self-portraits, representing her internal mental landscape.

This show is a testament to one of her earliest learned skills: Make due with what one has access to.

Produced on the heels of a year of self-led residency titled “Time Sensitive” (developed in community with theater artist & director Adil Mansoor), the pieces in USE WHAT YOU GOT were created using mediums jones was introduced to through a propensity for perusing hardware stores for art supplies and observing the work of graffiti artists throughout her life in NYC, LA and Pittsburgh. Industrial Sakura and Art Primo solid paint sticks, and Krink K-66 mops combine with hand-painted images to create a duplicitous union between “fine” and “street” art. She is challenging viewers to consider what is deemed as worthy of a gallery setting, and the value of “archival” materials. Who profits when an artwork lasts a lifetime?

The Self Avoidance Series portrays the shift jones experienced relative to her mental health while in isolation throughout the summer of 2020 and beyond. A departure from her previous entangled and precision based line-motifs, these images feature lines that are disparate— searching for one another. This series provokes thoughts of expansion and wander as opposed to tension and obsession. Themes in this collection include childhood/education, portals, means of elevation, transformation/snakes, psychological brain-mapping and transience.

USE WHAT YOU GOT is an artist-funded exhibit, with additional support provided by BOOM Concepts and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

GRATITUDES

atiya jones would like to thank her community of family, friends, and collaborators including: Valarie Williams, Tobie Robinson, Brandi Robinson, Jade Robinson, David Sierra, her nieces + nephews, past-atiya’s, DBUNKU / Global Negros, Home Street, Nisha Blackwell, Heather Manning, Jackie Walker, Imani Jahaan, Njaimah Njie, and Black Women everywhere, her therapist Ashley and Dr. Cross, Concept Gallery, White Whale Bookstore, Trace Brewery, and the countless number of people who have supported this work since making the decision to live as an artist in 2013.

GALLERY STATEMENT

“You could be making a lot more money-
If you would just use what you got,
To get what you want and forget this chump change.”

-Ronnie
The Players Club, 1998

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

atiya jones is an auto-didactic multi-disciplinary artist exploring themes of mental health; spirituality; migration; gentrification; capitalism; permanence vs. effemera and the effects thereof on her life experience as a queer Black American woman. She also identifies as human, a sister, friend and local community member. jones advocates for the impact that art-accessibility has on communities and believes that art should and can be everywhere.

Her work is informed by self- and geographical- exploration and is expressed as abstracted mark-making / precise line-work, photography, writing and painting. Artists and periods of inspiration include Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, Sol Lewitt, Deana Lawson, Shantell Martin, NeckFace, CLAWS, SWEETTOOF, the Pop-Art Movement- and Ready-Mades.

Since moving to Pittsburgh from her native Brooklyn, NY in 2016 jones has collaborated with various local businesses (White Whale, Concept Art Gallery, Moss Architects) to create large-scale drawings and murals in public facing spaces to further art-accessibility in Pittsburgh. In 2020 her work “The One About Calcite” was included in the exhibition Locally Sourced at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The following year she would become a recipient of the Arts | Equity | Reimagined grant for Time Sensitive (co-created with Adil Mansoor), a self-led artist residency supporting queer/trans BIPOC artists in Pittsburgh.