“Little Girl Blue” Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco CA, 2018

Janis Joplin in her rendition of the popular show tune “Little Girl Blue” famously altered

the lyrics doing away with the ending of the song in which a distraught girl can only be

consoled by a man, insinuating an ambiguity in which the singer is in the position of both

distraught woman and consoler, or a queering reinterpretation altogether. Removed

from its musical context, the title assumes an even stranger resonance amidst the

revolutionary fervor that’s fueled everything from the Women’s Marches to the #Metoo

movement–seemingly belittling the struggles for equality by generations of women with a

patronizing pat on the head. Little Girl Blue as an exhibition however, sees Black

responding to this revolutionary moment and rapidly shifting cultural landscape through a

mixture of intimate paintings, installation and the artist’s iconic painted paper sculptures

of everyday objects–interrogating everything from domesticity, gender roles and lesbian

culture, to addiction, activism and our material desires.