David-Jeremiah Considers Black Masculinity by Way of Lamborghinis

Hood Niggas Camping, a set of 28 paintings from 2020 inspired by Lamborghini sports cars, bears a trait characteristic of David-Jeremiah: a maximalist impulse that produces works of significant scale and densely layered content. Lamborghini references run through many of his works, and the ideal installation of Hood Niggas Camping, the artist said, is “in a massive circle, comprised of larger-than-life, Stonehenge-esque pedestals that act as freestanding chunks on a white cube wall.” 

His vision for the work is to evoke what he describes as “peak Texas hot.” He continued: “Have you ever looked at a fellow camper from across a campfire? The fire tricks you into believing that the best way to see the person in front of you is from its perspective. From this vantage point, you are the flame. You’re not on fire—you are fire. A fire to keep some hood niggas who decided to go camping warm.”

Since his first solo exhibition in 2020, David-Jeremiah has been a persistent phenom on the Texas art scene. His urgency and methodical studio practice emerged from a period of self-evaluation after spending nearly four years in prison for aggravated robbery committed when he was a teenager. While in prison, he conceived ideas for several series of works. Hood Niggas Camping was one of them. Another was a collection of paintings based on Lamborghini steering wheels.

Titled I Drive Thee (2021–23), the series—on view at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, through January—explores how some Lamborghinis are named after bulls that end up killing matadors. One example is the Lamborghini Miura, alluding to a breed of Spanish bulls that are large, fierce, and cunning. For David-Jeremiah, this description echoes the way the Black male body is often viewed as a site of masculinity, violence, and potential.

In another group of works, the “Acronym Paintings,” David-Jeremiah recognizes a duality between his pursuit of art in its purest forms and the realities of being a Black man in America. The acronyms “I.A.H.Y.F.F.A.W.D.” and “N.F.D.B.J.W.B.D.” represent indecipherable words of hate spoken aloud by the artist. Others represent internal dialogue imagined between a bull and a matador. “The original acronyms shrouded this sentiment from a certain type of Black person towards white people, but they’re limited by the fact that it’s just [a conversation between men],” he said. “I created a bull’s version of the acronyms, which elevates the conversation.”

David-Jeremiah has also worked in other forms. I Heart Micah (2019–23) is a video in which he puts bumper stickers on police cruisers that reference Micah Xavier Johnson, who killed five police officers in Dallas in 2016. The stickers are part of a fantasy narrative in which the police are grateful that their fellow officers were killed and reform their impulse to kill Black people. For The Lookout (2019), he staged a performance during which he lived in a cinder-block cell for three weeks.

Such works can be jarring and unsettling. There is no respite in David-Jeremiah’s oeuvre, just intensity and lots of awe, humor, shock, and dread. “I like being in control of how the practice evolves in and outside of ways I haven’t been able to,” he said. “Everything you push from yourself is beyond you. It’s righteous to leave a better version of yourself behind to keep the you you aren’t anymore company—just as it’s divine to send a better version of yourself forward to give hope to the you you aren’t yet.”