All art is political — some, more explicitly than others. The frenetic, expressionist paintings by pseudonymous artist JoeSam. that explore the American psyche — from racism to pop culture — show that existence is political, too.
“Text Messages,” at the Museum of the African Diaspora in downtown San Francisco, represents his timely, if long-overdue, first solo museum show in The City, featuring 15 mixed-media assemblages made between 1985 and 2020.
Born Joseph Samuels in 1938 in Harlem, the self-taught artist lived in the Bay Area from 1975 to 2015. The holder of a Ph.D. in educational psychology, he spent his first ten years in San Francisco working as director of the Head Start program. He credits the assassinations of former mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978 as the catalyst for committing his life to artmaking.
