Travis Johnson

Travis Johnson was born in Southern California, where he grew up with his 4 siblings in the Mojave Desert. He is currently based out of Olympia, WA.

Johnson has spent the last three decades developing his craft as a creative and uses his art to express the ontology of the black fragmented diasporic body. He is attending to a methodology of abstraction to tell the untold fragmented story of black existence. His work is centered around using plywood, clay, text, and found objects, to speak to black ontological displacement. The foundation of Johnson’s work is looking through the lens of being raised in the desert landscape cocooned by the family structure of black rural church folks. Johnson’s upbringing prompts a holistic approach to art making and working with materials. He is looking for the poetics in the materials, will the objects hold the black rural narrative? Johnson is peeling back the layers of aesthetics in search of the untold. Johnson’s practice is centered on asking questions and questioning, who was violent on your behalf. And how does that shape our culture? How can we live more tenderly, while possessing the power to be violent?

Along with his visual art, Travis has spent the last 28 years singing throughout the US on various tours with his family singing group Fivacious. Travis is currently touring throughout the US with the vocal trio Black Medicine.