The Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College presents the exhibition Jamea Richmond Edwards: another world and yet the same from September 13, 2025, through June 14, 2026, featuring a large body of newly created work in various mediums alongside a selection of collage-based paintings from the last seven years examining issues of race, class, and identity.

Themes close to the artist’s heart—notably her hometown of Detroit and the music associated with it, including jazz, soul, Motown, techno, and hip hop—are a strong undercurrent in her work, which is infused with a rhythm and energy evocative of the music that inspired it.

Richmond-Edwards outfits the subjects of her portraits, typically herself as well as family and friends, in elaborate, colorful attire, setting them against equally decorative backgrounds. Non-traditional materials such as neon shoelaces, sparkling pendants, and soft sculpture are often incorporated, adding dimensionality and a quality of limitlessness to her canvases. Additionally, the regalia, music, and movement of school marching bands are referenced both overtly and subtly, reflecting Richmond-Edwards’s personal history as a French horn player in ensembles throughout her formative and college years. These elements culminate in vibrant compositions that convey a sense of the personal style of the people the artist depicts, the communities she has been a part of, and the central role that fashion plays for many Detroiters.

With a new series of works debuting in this exhibition, Richmond-Edwards sets out to explore a world beyond the known universe. The exhibition title Another world and yet the same is borrowed from a seventeenth-century dystopian literary work of the same name, Mundus alter et idem (c. 1605). Written by Joseph Hall (1574–1656), the novel is an imaginary account of a voyage to the oceans south of Africa and stood as a satirical indictment of the power structures of England at that time.

Richmond-Edwards has adapted this narrative via a character of her own making, Iceberg, who appeals to family and friends to embark on an oceanic caravan to Antarctica, where they might establish a new, egalitarian society. This fictionalization presents the inherent challenges of creating a utopian state on a rapidly shrinking continent and mirrors the contemporary crises of nations that are under threat from rising sea levels or are experiencing the promises and pitfalls of self-determination and independence. With their grand scale and multilayered meanings, these works take the fantastical, otherworldly elements of Richmond-Edwards’s previous series to new, epic heights.

Explains the Wellin Museum’s Alexander Jarman, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions and Academic Outreach, “This exhibition will mark an important evolution in the artist’s practice. While Richmond-Edwards has created large-scale paintings previously, this is the first time a new body of work will coalesce around a central narrative of the artist’s own invention. Some of these works are directly informed by the research she has undertaken with staff and faculty at Hamilton College, and many of the issues and themes she is addressing—climate change, democracy, mythology, and race—are relevant to communities throughout the US and around the world. We are proud to have helped fuel this next chapter of Richmond-Edwards’s artistic evolution and look forward to the conversations it will engender with audiences.”

Richmond-Edwards adds, “I am excited to present this new body of work and the story it tells, which I am thinking of as an epic. It’s about a young guy named Iceberg who is leading his family to Antarctica. It’s a whole narrative. At a time when it feels like our climate is disintegrating and our politics are creating deeper divisions, I can build a new vision for the world in this exhibition. I believe that humanity’s future rests not only in the hands of politicians or scientists, but also in the ability of artists to imagine alternate futures. We are all an integral part of finding solutions for the uncertain times ahead and I hope these new works energize and inspire viewers.”