Elijah Wheat Showroom is honored to present the New York debut of Nashville based multimedia artist, Marlos E’van. The exhibition’s title, ghostDope references a fictitious, exaggerated amount of an illicit substance that comes from testimony of unlikely ‘witnesses’ that cooperate for plea deals in the Federal Justice System. Largely, the indictment comes with little to no tangible evidence and the ‘ghost’ triggers a larger sentence due to an offense that crosses the threshold of a statutory minimum. The notorious federal ‘War on Drugs’ cruelly persisted by prosecuting already marginalized populations and fed the prison industrial complex by mass incarcerating individuals of both large and small scale drug busts. These ghosts lie to the jury, and unjustly are meant to take lives away from society, communities and families. Now, how appropriate to discuss these injustices, as NY state (and others) are legalizing cannabis, the inconsistencies of BIPOC opportunities of ownership are futile in a broken system of regulations and policies.

“If somebody asks me what ghostDope is, I’d tell’em it's everything. ghostDope is an acknowledgement from different perspectives within the Dope game. Which includes: the injustices, the highs, the lows, and the metaphorical idealism that arranges structures like oppression, hate, & power as forms of dope— Addictive in every measure.“ E’van explains. Through a personal history, and a community driven social practice, the artist explores scenes from his memory, and from other’s histories offering inspiring stories of love, resilience, death, and overcoming addiction.

E’van’s paintings are often diaristic, with charged scenes such as “Crack Polaroid” where a childhood memory haunts the canvas. His raw execution with acrylic on unstretched and up-cycled fabrics hang from found boards offering a vision of ingenuity while the narrative subject matter eerily lives, like the painting, “Blank House”. Other works like "Tha Living 2 Tha Dead” or “Somewhere There’s a Lil Old Lady Putting Up Her House 2 Get Her Son/Grandson Outta Jail” plainly describe in text what’s uniquely represented in symbols, bold color and thick marks in an unfinished yet stylized environment. Alongside paintings is a “Party Pack” of controlled and subscription based soft sculptures of oversized pills, further exploiting the dangers of ‘white coat’ drug dealers, as Doctors and big Pharma’s role in the opioid crises, among other insidious abuses of power.

Works will be exhibited in Newburgh, NY and open on June 19th with a reception with the artist from 3:00PM-6:00PM. The show will run Saturdays and Sundays noon-6PM, until August 1st, 2021 and by appointment.

Marlos E’van (b. 1988 Tupelo, MS) Nashville based artist, E’van interweaves different mediums such as painting, performance, and filmmaking to create worlds in which their art recollects black histories: joy, pain, celebration, sorrow, and complex emotions from reenacted scenes of American histories. A subtle vernacular in expression has caught recognition from such publications such as Hyperallergic and Native Magazine. In addition to their work as an artist, E’van co-founded/co-designs M-SPAR, McGruder Social Practice Artist Residency out of the McGruder Center in North Nashville.   Working as an educator in a hard-hit redlined Nashville neighborhood, E’van actively listens to his pupils, gathering stories that also inform E’van’s paintings. Their own life creates first-person narratives in paintings targeting marginalization, stemming from a queer black history rooted in his home state of Mississippi. Marlos E’van’s work is included in multiple Southern collections, has been shown in VA, TN, GA, and NY.  He’s been awarded the Mellon Foundation for McGruder, and the Metro Arts Thrive grant. He received his B.F.A. from Watkins College of Art, Nashville, TN.