“otherwise is not a place but a practice” artist talk.

During Ashon’s Fellowship with New City Arts in January 2021, he created various pieces that explore the concepts of sameness, difference, that attempt to think about versions of the nothingness of blackness, of blackqueerness. Working with scripture, with hymns, with concordance, with shouting, the various pieces were created by attempting to figure out a way to relate to a religious and spiritual world of plentitude and possibility, the space and complexity and contradiction of Blackpentecostalism. He is extending the foundations of his two books, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility and The Lonely Letters, into several large-scale paintings using an audiovisual practice that includes dancing, painting, and singing in rhythm with Blackpentecostal hymns.