April Sunami is learning to take up space

During the three months April Sunami spent in residency at the late Aminah Robinson’s East Side abode beginning in January, she tried her best to embrace the space as home. Sunami worked six days a week in the sunlit rear studio, chipped away at Robinson’s extensive book collection, and began taking daily afternoon naps on the living room sofa. 

There were limits, however. When she spoke of eating meals there, for instance, I followed by asking if she had actually taken to cooking in Robinson’s kitchen, which includes a tile floor she embedded with her artwork, and which has prevented some previous residents from utilizing the room owing to fears of spillage. 

“No,” Sunami said, and laughed. “It was either carryout or something I brought from home. … It’s just so funny how different people use and inhabit the space. … I remember [artist] Bryan Moss being like, ‘Did you get haunted yet?’ And I was like, ‘What? I don’t do rocking chairs going by themselves. I don’t do ghosts.’ But it was good. It was a good energy. And it pushed me to go outside of my comfort zone.”

In addition to the 10 paintings Sunami completed during her time in the house – all of which will be on display in “Living Mythologies” at Lindsay Gallery beginning with an opening reception from 5:30-8:30 p.m. tonight (Friday, Nov. 6) – she also experimented with bookmaking and produced a number of linocuts. Even more, the Columbus artist said that something about living in such close communion with Robinson helped her to become less precious about her own work, evidenced by her decision to employ in this collection certain beads and sea shells she had kept in her possession for years, waiting for the perfect moment in which to utilize them.

“This piece over here, I got these shells from Florida, and I’ve had them in my studio forever. … And I always had it in mind, like, I gotta save it for the right piece. It’s gotta be the biggest piece I ever do,” Sunami said in early November from Lindsay Gallery. “And I think what I got [from the residency] was permission to just do it, to go for it. … And I think it’s from seeing how unlimited and how bold Aminah was in her work. When you go in there, you can see she was trying all sorts of things. It wasn’t confined to painting or fabric art. It was embedded in the floors, written on the walls. And I think that was encouragement for me. And especially if you look at some of her bigger compositions, she obviously was technically very good, but she wasn’t worried about it. It was more about getting the image down, you know? And so, that was it.”

Collectively, the paintings on display within “Living Mythologies” exude a warmth that can feel at odds with the environment from which the work sprung, both in terms of the actual weather (Sunami recalled much of the residency unfolding in bitter cold) and the chilling social and political climate that has persisted under the current administration. 

Sunami attributed this to the cocooning effect of Robinson’s home – going in she said wanted to allow the spirit of the space to shape her practice – as well as a social media diet she began in the run up to the residency.

“I’ll be completely transparent about this, I was fighting a social media addiction and I was trying to disconnect, because especially beginning in November, I was doom scrolling to the max,” she said. “And, honestly, for a minute it was affecting my work, and it was affecting my creativity, and it was starting to affect my mood. And so, what I really resolved was to spend my time in Aminah’s house disconnected from it. And when I was there, I was not on my phone, and there was no information feedback from the outside.”

Sunami’s stunning portrait work focuses heavily on the faces of Black women graced with outward flowing hair that can read as galactic, at times, the colorful locks often embedded with beads, shells, or mirrored fragments and extending far off the canvas. These are figures unafraid to take up space – a lesson Sunami said she has had to learn over time. So, while many of the paintings on display at the gallery are based on photographs of friends, including Tifani Kendrick and Michol Childress, they can also be read as part of a growing self-portrait, the work completed over the years reflecting different periods of the artist’s life.

“In the past people would ask, ‘Is that a portrait of you?’ ‘Does it look like a portrait of me? No,’” Sunami said. “But as I get older and think more about it, yeah. As I look back and reflect on it, it’s a portrait of where I was and what I was going through internally. … And one thing I’ll say about this particular collection in general is that I’m not a naturally gregarious person, and I’m not naturally outgoing. … And here, I’m portraying women who take up space, who have agency. They almost command your attention. And they kind of taught me how to do that as well.”