MICHAEL MCFADDEN

There is a certain charge that comes when artists insist that the stuff of daily life, its toys, its rituals, its messes, belongs on the same stage as monuments and masterpieces.

A curtain lifts. A dancer moves across the stage, costume fluttering around graceful limbs.

This is how Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe, on view at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston through March 29, 2026, begins—or how it continues.

In the attic of memory, objects slip out of time: A letter filed away, a photograph without a name, a clay koala bear made by a child and placed on a shelf.

In 1978, around 4,000 LGBTQIA+ Houstonians convened at the Astro Arena. 

When an artist allows it, their practice can become all-encompassing, blurring the lines between practice, spirit, and the world around them.

People often consider abstraction to be the absence of content, the erasure of reference.

Houston is a city with many identities, from Screwston, an homage to DJ Screw, and Bayou City to the simplicity of H-Town or the more commercial Energy Capital of the World. Space City, though, is more than a nickname; it speaks to a rich history of innovation and exploration entwining the city with NASA.

There’s an old adage about how those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it, but histories are constructed through the perspective of those in power.

Pollution is a constant presence in places like Houston, one that sinks into the background of our everyday lives becoming all too tolerable until we receive severe reminders of the impact.