As politicians across the country chip away at voting rights and make it harder for people to participate in our democracy, Tomashi Jackson’s Across the Universe at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston couldn’t be more urgent.

Jackson, who was born in Houston, has made a career of digging deep into issues of voting rights, education, labor, and the systems that either empower or oppress communities of color.

In one striking piece, you can see Black voters standing in line in 1948 right next to an image of President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965. All of this is wrapped in today’s reminders that the battle for access to the ballot box is far from over.

Her research-driven approach shines throughout the exhibition, but what really struck me was her masterful use of materials.

Marble dust from Greece (the birthplace of democracy), soil from Ohio (a key Underground Railroad route), and dirt from Red Rocks in Colorado all show up alongside old election flyers, church photos, and ballots from both the U.S. and Greece.

Minute By Minute (Juneteenth in Five Points Denver, CO 2023 / Leaves Study by my Mother in COVID Isolation, CA 2020), was a delightful piece that contained two of my favorite things: music and stories. I’ve been on a Yacht Rock kick lately, and I grew up listening to Michael McDonald and The Doobie Brothers without really appreciating their influence. Jackson’s sound collage includes an interview with her late mother about the family’s migration stories, paired with the song Minute By Minute. This piece felt like a bridge between memory, music, and cultural legacy.

Throughout the exhibition, Jackson draws inspiration from Josef Albers’ 1963 book Interaction of Color, particularly his idea of “vibrating boundaries,” the optical effect created when highly saturated colors collide.

Jackson applied this theory to her 2016 work Vibrating Boundaries (Law of the Land), developed in Houston during a particularly painful summer of police violence against Black women and girls.

She collaborated with local artists to reenact the stress positions endured by Tatyana Rhodes, Dajerria Becton, and Sandra Bland, while layering these performances with readings from Albers’ book and footage of assaults by police. Jackson’s hands appear in the video, rearranging photographs of the women alongside Heman Marion Sweatt, whose Supreme Court case helped dismantle segregation in Texas law schools.

Jackson explains “We held five poses, each for one minute each, conjoined by a tubular knitted color study on a concrete slab in the 100-plus-degree Texas heat. At Project Row Houses, I recorded Naiymah Jackson reading two chapters from Interaction of Color to her children.”

It’s a powerful, sobering reminder of how these stories are connected across generations.

But what surprised me most was Jackson’s sense of humor.

Hidden among the politically charged pieces are playful music videos where Jackson, as her alter ego Tommy Tonight, lip-syncs to ‘90s R&B songs as part of a fictional boy band called D’TALENTZ.

At first, I was completely thrown off. I didn’t know what I was watching until I read the description. Then it clicked. She was subverting the boy band trope and using humor to explore performance, gender, and Black musical traditions. Even in the middle of a show about serious, heavy topics, Jackson finds space for joy, play, and cultural remixing.

With Across the Universe, Tomashi Jackson weaves history, humor, and material storytelling to open our eyes and stir our hearts.

She turns CAMH into a space for listening, for grappling with hard truths, and for celebrating the beauty of persistence.

Her journey, from Houston murals to global stages, is proof that art can hold both the weight of injustice and the lightness of joy. That’s where its true power lies.

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