Looking for Power in Each Other and Finding It Within Ourselves I combines Lonnie Holley’s compositional painting technique with his sculptural practice of using found materials to voice embedded everyday histories. Whilst Holley, alongside Thornton Dial, is understood as a principal conduit of the Yard Art show of the American South to mainstream art discourse, quilt-making is an equally significant, parallel art tradition endemic to Black artists of the Southern states. Recognising Holley and Dial’s close friendships with the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers from the 1990s onwards, Holley’s gesture of painting on quilts is both a tribute and statement about the interconnected nature of these mediums of artistic expressions.

Spectral wisps of stars and stripes weave through the work's composition, contemplating how so many destinies are bound together under symbols of fluctuating beliefs and identities. Holley’s kaleidoscopic compositions of interlocking facial profiles pay homage to ancestral memories of both known and unsung heroes who preceded him: those who established the cultural framework that facilitated his own artistic expression, as well as those who sustain the ongoing, multigenerational struggle for social justice.

Looking for Power in Each Other and Finding It Within Ourselves I was commissioned for Holley's 2026 Inserzioni presentation at the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy.