Art Redefined by Janiva Ellis Paintings

Janiva Ellis: Embracing the Unfinished Canvas

Janiva Ellis’s latest exhibition, Fear Corroded Ape, opened at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 31 January 2024. Yet, as visitors wandered through the gallery spaces, many might have noticed something unusual: several paintings appeared incomplete. In reality, this was no oversight. Ellis deliberately chose to showcase works lingering in her New York studio for years, some untouched since 2019. By doing so, she challenges conventional notions of artistic finality, inviting viewers to engage with art as a living, evolving process rather than a static product.

The exhibition’s 14 pieces—ranging from fragmented mythological scenes to chaotic architectural sketches—defy easy categorisation. Ellis employs a technique she describes as “liquefying” form, blending Renaissance-inspired chiaroscuro with frenetic, almost digital-like layering. For instance, in one untitled work, spectral faces emerge from washes of muted greens and greys, their features dissolving into pencil marks that evoke half-erased blueprints. Meanwhile, another canvas, Whimsy, juxtaposes gothic arches against a Minotaur’s twisted form, its surfaces scarred by solvent streaks. Crucially, Ellis leaves ambiguity about which works are “finished.” As she explained during a studio visit, “Some are done. Some aren’t. Some I’ll never touch again—but good luck telling the difference.”

Disrupting Mastery in Institutional Spaces

Ellis’s decision to exhibit unresolved works carries deeper significance within the Carpenter Center’s context. Designed by Le Corbusier in 1963, the building houses Harvard University’s painting studios, where students refine techniques under rigorous academic traditions. By placing her unfinished canvases alongside these spaces, Ellis subtly critiques the art world’s obsession with polished expertise. “I wanted vulnerability,” she noted, “to show that art isn’t about perfection. It’s about questioning, experimenting, even failing.”

This ethos aligns with her broader rejection of prescriptive labels. Since her breakout solo show, Lick Shot, at Manhattan’s 47 Canal gallery in 2017, critics have lauded her ability to fuse cartoonish absurdity with visceral unease. Take Uh Oh, Look Who Got Wet, a 2019 Whitney Biennial standout. Here, rubber-limbed figures wade through neon waters under a sickly pink sky, their distorted bodies echoing both maternal tenderness and existential dread. Rujeko Hockley, a Biennial co-curator, praised the piece’s “unsettling ambiguity,” noting how Ellis balances humour with latent violence.

Yet institutional recognition brings its own tensions. Ellis’s 2021 solo exhibition, Rats, at the ICA Miami, marked a stylistic shift toward darker, more abstract compositions. Stephanie Seidel, the show’s curator, highlighted Ellis’s exploration of “sociopolitical questions surrounding Blackness,” though Ellis herself expressed frustration at feeling pigeonholed. “There was this assumption the work had to be about race,” she recalled. “But reducing it to identity feels reductive. My questions are bigger: How do we resist dehumanisation? How do we find joy amid chaos?”

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Mythology, Memory, and Cultural Subversion

Ellis’s work thrives on paradox. References to Greek mythology—Orpheus, the Minotaur—collide with nods to pop culture and personal history. Consider Gay Orpheus, a Carpenter Center piece whose title winks at both classical tragedy and the 1959 film Black Orpheus. Thickets of thorns engulf fragmented figures, their forms dissolving into acid-yellow voids. Meanwhile, a nearby shelf displays influences ranging from Fred Moten’s critical theory to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The latter, a manifesto of hyper-individualism, seems an odd companion for an artist who champions communal creativity. Ellis, however, relishes the dissonance: “Engaging with ideas I disagree with sharpens my own. It’s like arguing with a ghost.”

Geography also shapes her practice. Born in Oakland in 1987 and raised in Hawaii, Ellis draws on Kauai’s volcanic landscapes—lush peripheries encircling a primal, untamed core. This tension between order and wildness permeates her compositions. In Impressions in Spring, a dilapidated cottage crumbles under swathes of ochre and slate, its decay suggesting both loss and renewal. Similarly, an untitled work inspired by her grandfather, architect John H. Beyer, reimagines Grand Central Terminal as a labyrinth of skeletal beams, its structure echoing the Carpenter Center’s Brutalist angles.

The Unfinished as Radical Act

Ellis’s embrace of incompletion challenges market-driven expectations. In an industry where works often sell for six-figure sums pre-completion, her refusal to “finish” pieces like Rat Hands—a Miami-era fragment depicting clawed figures—feels quietly revolutionary. “Galleries want coherence, a brand,” she remarked. “But I’m not here to soothe anyone. I’m here to ask questions that don’t have answers.”

This philosophy extends to her studio habits. Unlike peers who meticulously plan each brushstroke, Ellis works intuitively, layering and erasing in response to mood, music, or memory. During the pandemic, she listened to audiobooks while painting—Rand’s Atlas Shrugged one week, Toni Morrison’s Beloved the next. The resulting works, like 20-24, pulse with this cognitive dissonance: candy-coloured geometries clash with murky, blood-like smears, creating a visual tension that mirrors her ideological wrestling.

Yet for all its complexity, Ellis’s art remains rooted in visceral emotion. A forthcoming portrait of figure skater Surya Bonaly—unseen in public—captures this duality. Bonaly, who defied skating’s Eurocentric norms by performing banned backflips, becomes a metaphor for resistance. Ellis’s brushwork oscillates between fury and grace, the skater’s form fragmenting into prismatic shards. “She was punished for her brilliance,” Ellis said. “But that’s what made her iconic. Sometimes, breaking the rules is the only way to be seen.”

A New Chapter: Optimism Amid Uncertainty

Today, Ellis describes her mindset as “optimistic and sensual”—a stark contrast to the angst-ridden themes of Rats. This shift mirrors broader changes in her life: a move from Miami back to New York, renewed collaborations with curators like Dan Byers, and a growing confidence in her voice. “I used to worry about being misunderstood,” she admitted. “Now I think, let them misunderstand. At least they’re feeling something.”

The Carpenter Center show embodies this evolution. By exhibiting works in flux, Ellis invites viewers to witness art’s messiness, its false starts and dead ends. In doing so, she questions not just what art is, but what it could be. As she prepares for an April talk with scholar Rizvana Bradley, Ellis remains characteristically defiant. “Mastery is a myth,” she said. “True creativity lies in the struggle, the not-knowing. That’s where the magic happens.”

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The Alchemy of Process and Impermanence

Ellis’s studio practice defies traditional workflows. Unlike many artists who plan compositions meticulously, she thrives on spontaneity, often reworking canvases over years. Take Uh Oh, Look Who Got Wet, the 2019 Whitney Biennial piece. Initially conceived as a study of fluid dynamics, the painting evolved into a haunting narrative of rescue and dissolution. Ellis recalls listening to Mitski’s Nobody on loop while layering the foreground figure’s melting skin. “The music dictated the rhythm,” she said. “Each brushstroke became a beat, a pulse.” This symbiotic relationship between sound and image recurs throughout her work. For Fear Corroded Ape, she paired Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew with the clatter of construction outside her Chinatown studio, channelling the dissonance into jagged, overlapping forms.

The physicality of her process is equally striking. Ellis often uses household tools—credit cards, dish sponges, even hair combs—to scrape and texture surfaces. In Whimsy, the Minotaur’s furrowed brow was etched with a palette knife, while the arches above were softened with rags dipped in turpentine. “I want the labour to show,” she explained. “The cracks, the stains—they’re proof of the conversation between me and the canvas.” This rawness resonates with audiences. During the Carpenter Center’s opening week, visitors lingered before Impressions in Spring, noting how its peeling layers evoked weathered murals in urban landscapes. One attendee, a local sculptor, remarked, “It feels alive, like it’s still breathing.”

Cultural Echoes and Collective Memory

Ellis’s work frequently draws from shared cultural touchstones, though rarely in straightforward ways. Gay Orpheus, for instance, merges classical myth with queer iconography. The titular figure, rendered in chalky whites and pinks, descends into a vortex of thorns, his lyre splintered into shards. Art historian Rizvana Bradley links this to Ellis’s fascination with “myth as a living language, not a relic.” In a 2022 essay, Bradley wrote, “Ellis treats Orpheus not as a symbol of doomed love, but as a cipher for marginalised voices demanding to be heard.”

Similarly, Ellis’s untitled homage to her grandfather’s architecture intertwines personal and collective histories. John H. Beyer’s restoration of Grand Central Terminal in the 1990s—a project that cost $196 million and required 1,600 workers—inspired her to reimagine the site as a skeletal maze. “I thought about the hands that rebuilt it,” she said. “The immigrants, the labourers. Their stories are in the walls, even if no one sees them.” Her painting, though abstract, channels this ethos: pencil lines mimic scaffolding, while washes of grey evoke decades of grime and polish.

Yet Ellis resists didacticism. When asked about political messaging, she quipped, “If I wanted to write a manifesto, I’d use a typewriter.” Instead, her work invites open-ended dialogue. A 2023 group show at London’s Tate Modern, Fragmented Futures, included her piece 20-24 alongside works by Kerry James Marshall and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Critics noted how Ellis’s destabilised forms contrasted with Marshall’s bold figuration, sparking debates about representation in contemporary art. “Ellis doesn’t give you answers,” wrote The Guardian’s Adrian Searle. “She gives you riddles wrapped in neon and rust.”

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Navigating Identity and Artistic Autonomy

Ellis’s relationship with institutional spaces remains complex. After her 2021 ICA Miami show, she privately vowed to avoid exhibitions that framed her work through a solely racial lens. “It’s exhausting,” she admitted. “Like being asked to perform your trauma for a room of strangers.” This stance echoes broader critiques of “diversity quotas” in the art world. A 2022 report by Artnet News revealed that while Black artists’ representation in major U.S. galleries rose to 12% post-2020, many faced pressure to address identity explicitly. Ellis, however, opts for subtler subversion.

Her 2023 painting Soft Power exemplifies this approach. At first glance, the canvas—a riot of lavender and gold—seems purely abstract. Look closer, though, and spectral faces emerge, their features blurred as if viewed through frosted glass. Ellis drew inspiration from 1970s funk album covers, particularly Parliament-Funkadelic’s Afrofuturist aesthetics. “I wanted joy, not pain,” she said. “Celebration as resistance.” The piece now hangs in the Studio Museum in Harlem, part of a permanent collection that prioritises “ Black artistry beyond struggle narratives.”

Collaborations have also bolstered her autonomy. In 2022, Ellis partnered with musician Solange Knowles on Scales, a multimedia installation for the Venice Biennale. Knowles’s ambient soundscapes merged with Ellis’s liquid projections, creating an immersive meditation on water and memory. “We didn’t say a word about race,” Ellis noted. “We just talked about our mums, the ocean, how light bends underwater.” The installation, later acquired by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, marked a turning point. “It proved I could exist in institutional spaces without being reduced to a checkbox.”

The Role of Audience and Interpretation

Ellis actively courts ambiguity, leaving room for viewers to imprint their own narratives. During a March 2024 workshop at the Carpenter Center, she encouraged participants to reinterpret Rat Hands—a small, gnashing composition excluded from her Miami show. One attendee likened it to “a punk rock zine,” another to “a medieval bestiary.” Ellis grinned. “Exactly. The painting isn’t mine anymore. It’s yours.”

This generosity extends to her online presence. Unlike many peers, Ellis shares works-in-progress on Instagram, inviting followers to critique colour choices or compositional tweaks. A 2023 post showing Gay Orpheus mid-revision sparked a 500-comment thread debating queer iconography in Renaissance art. “Social media democratises the process,” she said. “It’s messy, sure, but so is making art.”

Not all feedback is welcome, however. After far-right groups co-opted Atlas Shrugged imagery in online forums, Ellis briefly considered abandoning textual references. “But that’s letting them win,” she concluded. Instead, she doubled down, embedding Rand’s phrases into collages that mock their original context. A 2024 series, Objectively Shrugged, superimposes Randian slogans over cartoonish explosions, the text dissolving into confetti-like debris. “It’s satire,” Ellis said. “Turning their weapons into glitter.”

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Materiality and the Digital Frontier

Ellis’s engagement with digital culture further blurs boundaries between mediums. For Fear Corroded Ape, she experimented with AI tools, feeding sketches into generative programs to create distorted echoes of her work. One output, a glitchy rendition of Whimsy, was printed on translucent fabric and draped across the gallery’s stairwell. “It’s a funhouse mirror,” she explained. “The AI doesn’t understand depth or metaphor. It just mimics, which is its own kind of poetry.”

This interplay extends to her use of colour. While earlier works leaned into Day-Glo exuberance, recent pieces embrace muted, almost digital palettes. 20-24, for example, pairs millennial pink with murky greens reminiscent of corrupted JPEGs. “Colour is emotional code,” Ellis said. “The right hue can trigger a memory or a meme.” Art critic Jerry Saltz likened her chromatic shifts to “a TikTok feed—chaotic, addictive, deeply human.”

Yet Ellis remains rooted in analogue traditions. She still grinds her own pigments, a practice learned during a 2015 residency in Marfa, Texas. There, she studied under painter Julie Mehretu, who advised, “Let the materials speak first.” Ellis took this to heart. Her 2024 piece Chronophage layers lapis lazuli over rusted iron filings, the minerals reacting unpredictably over time. “It’ll keep evolving,” she said. “In 10 years, it might be a completely different painting. I love that.”

Looking Ahead: Fluidity as a Form of Freedom

As Fear Corroded Ape enters its final weeks, Ellis is already plotting her next moves. A September 2024 show at London’s Hayward Gallery will feature collaborative works with choreographer Akram Khan, merging painting and performance. “We’re exploring erosion,” she revealed. “How bodies and landscapes wear each other down.” Meanwhile, her Surya Bonaly portrait—still unfinished—may debut in a 2025 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Reflecting on her journey, Ellis resists tidy conclusions. “Growth isn’t linear,” she said. “It’s more like a scribble—loops, crossouts, sudden leaps.” For an artist who thrives in the in-between, uncertainty isn’t a hurdle but a catalyst. As she prepares to leave her Chinatown studio for a larger space in Brooklyn, she laughs. “Maybe I’ll finally finish something. Or maybe not. Either way, it’ll be true.”

Legacy in Motion: Redefining Artistic Completion

Janiva Ellis’s impact on contemporary art extends far beyond her canvases. By rejecting the notion of a “finished” work, she has sparked broader conversations about creativity, labour, and value in the digital age. A 2024 study by the Art Fund UK found that 68% of emerging artists now describe their practice as “process-oriented,” a shift curators attribute partly to Ellis’s influence. Meanwhile, institutions like London’s Hayward Gallery and New York’s MoMA have begun acquiring unfinished pieces, signalling a departure from traditional collection criteria. “Ellis made it okay to embrace the provisional,” said Clara Kim, senior curator at the Hayward. “Her work asks us to rethink what we consider ‘complete’—and why.”

Ellis’s approach has also reshaped art education. During a 2023 residency at Glasgow School of Art, she encouraged students to exhibit works mid-iteration, stains and corrections visible. One participant, painter Rajni Perera, later adopted this method for her Royal Academy showcase. “Janiva taught me that vulnerability isn’t weakness,” Perera said. “It’s a bridge between artist and viewer.”

The Studio as a Living Archive

Ellis’s Brooklyn studio, relocated from Chinatown in early 2024, functions as both workshop and archive. Canvases dating back to 2015 lean against exposed brick walls, some partially painted over. “They’re like old friends,” she remarked. “Sometimes we pick up where we left off. Sometimes we argue.” Her storage system—a colour-coded grid of digital photos and paint-smeared index cards—reveals meticulous organisation beneath the apparent chaos. Assistant curator Tiana Webb Evans, who visited in March 2024, noted, “It’s a living database. Each piece has multiple timelines, versions, futures.”

This archival ethos informs her market strategy. Unlike peers who produce limited editions, Ellis allows sold works to remain “open.” Collectors of Gay Orpheus (2022), for instance, receive annual updates on its condition, including minor touch-ups Ellis makes during studio visits. “It’s about shared custody,” she explained. Auction results reflect this innovation: in 2023, Uh Oh, Look Who Got Wet fetched £389,000 at Sotheby’s—42% above estimate—with the listing emphasising its “evolving nature.”

Future Horizons: Beyond the Canvas

Ellis’s September 2024 Hayward Gallery exhibition, Liquid Atlas, marks her first foray into large-scale installation. Collaborating with choreographer Akram Khan, she’ll transform the gallery into a “painting in motion.” Dancers will interact with suspended canvases coated in UV-reactive pigments UV-reactive pigments UV-reactive pigments, their movements altering the works under blacklight. “It’s erosion as performance,” Ellis said. Preliminary tests, documented in ArtReview, show swirls of phosphorescent blue dissolving into charcoal streaks—a visual echo of coastal tides.

Simultaneously, she’s developing a digital archive with Google Arts & Culture. Slated for 2025, the project will use AI to map connections between her works, from early sketches to the MoMA retrospective. Users can trace how a 2017 figure study morphed into Rat Hands, or watch time-lapses of paintings changing over years. “Democratising the process excites me,” Ellis noted. “Maybe someone in Mumbai will remix my stuff into something wilder.”

Conclusion: The Eternal Dialogue of Art and Existence

Janiva Ellis’s career defies easy summation—a fact she’d likely celebrate. Through her embrace of flux, she challenges not just artistic norms, but deeper cultural fixations on resolution and control. Whether repurposing Randian individualism as glittery satire or embedding collective memory into architectural abstraction, her work insists on art as a verb, not a noun.

Critics sometimes label her “post-disciplinary,” though Ellis shrugs off the term. “Labels are for jars, not people,” she quipped during an April 2024 talk at Oxford’s Ruskin School. Yet her influence is undeniable. From TikTok artists documenting “unfinished journeys” to museums rehanging collections thematically rather than chronologically, Ellis’s fingerprints surface everywhere.

As the Carpenter Center show closes on 6 April 2024, Ellis prepares for quieter revolutions. The Surya Bonaly portrait, still evolving, awaits its moment. The MoMA retrospective looms. And in her Brooklyn studio, new canvases whisper possibilities. “I used to fear the blank page,” she admitted. “Now I see it as a collaborator. We’ll figure it out together—or not. Either way, it’s alive.”

In a world craving certainty, Ellis offers something radical: the beauty of not knowing. Her paintings, like life itself, remain gloriously, necessarily unfinished.