This Is America, curated by Maritza Lacayo, at the Perez Art Museum Miami

THIS IS AMERICA, CURATED BY MARITZA LACAYO
28 MAY 2026 – 23 MAY 2027
PEREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI
1103 BISCAYNE BOULEVARD
MIAMI, FLORIDA 33132
THIS IS AMERICA AT PEREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI

LIST OF WORKS IN THIS IS AMERICA BY BAILLY

John William Bailly. 06 January 2021, 2021. Oil on canvas. 86 x 120 inches / 220 x 300 cm. Collection of PAMM.

TEXT FROM THE PAMM GUIDE TO THE EXHIBITION

6th of January, 2021 is an oil painting on canvas by British-French-American artist, John William Bailly, made in 2021. It measures roughly seven tall by ten feet wide and is hung in a landscape orientation, meaning its shorter side runs parallel to the ground.

The painting first reveals a dense and chaotic assortment of colors, shapes, lines, and patterns. The scene can be divided into horizontal thirds: a sky at the top, a background in the middle, and a foreground below. The sky is rendered as a gridlock or patchwork pattern of different small squares—reds, blues, yellows, browns, blacks, and whites— with fragments of text and poetry visible across many of them.

In the center background, the dome of the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C., rises prominently, rendered in red and white vertical stripes. In the foreground, a churning mass of tangled figures, limbs, and bodies surges upwards in a pyramidal formation towards the Capitol. The figures are rendered in energetic white and dark gestural marks that overlap and interweave. Several cherry blossom tree branches rise from the crowd into the patchwork sky above.

Throughout the composition, gestural lines overlap and twist frantically. The painted surface shows evidence of scratching, dripping, and heavy layering, with visible texture and energetic brushwork across the entire canvas. The crowd in the foreground presses forward as a tangled, surging mass toward the Capitol building, with individual figures dissolving into the dense network of overlapping marks and limbs. The patchwork sky fragments the upper portion of the composition into competing blocks of color and text, creating a fractured visual field above the tumultuous scene below. The title references the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.