Houston-based artist Jamal Cyrus draws us in and implores us to look closely at what is not there. His ongoing Eroding Witness series illuminates forgotten and erased histories of the Black Power movement in Houston, Texas. While the larger liberation movements of cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles are historically more well-known and documented, Cyrus seeks to excavate rich local histories of resistance from the Houston and Third Ward communities.

His diptych Eroding Witness, Season 3 Episode 20 (2018) is composed of two archival documents reproduced on laser-cut papyrus. The document on the left, from the front page of the Houston Chronicle, boasts the headliner article “30-Year Pot Sentence Justified or Political?” a clear sensationalizing of the arrest of local Black resistance leader Lee Otis Johnson. The corresponding document on the right is a compilation of shorter articles concerning Johnson’s sentencing and well-being after his 1968 arrest. While a student at Houston’s predominantly Black Texas Southern University, Johnson led the 1967 TSU student strike and was a leader of the TSU riot, in which a policeman was killed and nearly five hundred students were arrested. In 1968, Johnson was arrested for giving marijuana to a policeman and was sentenced by an all-white jury to a prison term of thirty years. While imprisoned, the chant of “Free Lee Otis!” became a rallying cry for students and progressives across Texas who wanted drug law reforms and the promotion of civil rights.

Cyrus graduated from Houston’s High School of the Performing and Visual Arts. He early attended Texas Southern University—where he would later return as a professor. He obtained his BFA from University of Houston in 2004 with a concentration in Photography and Digital Media. He received his MFA from University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in Painting in 2008. The artist has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, and was featured in the Whitney Biennial of 2006