Li Turner, “Facing Down Systemic Greed and Other Offenses”

by Matthew Kangas

Gallery 110, Seattle, Washington

Continuing to May 31, 2025

Li Turner, “Barbie in the Bullring,” 2018, acrylic on canvas, 30” X 24”. All images courtesy of Gallery 110, Seattle. All photos: Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction.

In the blizzard of social and political turmoil we now face every day, it is not surprising that artists are increasingly turning to subjects that express protest, resistance and outrage. That being the case, it’s necessary to identify those artists who have been pursuing the topic of injustice all along. Li Turner, for instance, has long committed to social justice, as her exhibit “Facing Down Systemic Greed and Other Offenses” demonstrates. The show addresses an extraordinary range of such topics and in so doing also proves that aesthetic values need not be jettisoned to make points about wrong-headed social attitudes and long-standing tropes of prejudice and sexism.

Li Turner, “Keys to Equality,” 2025, watercolor & gouache, 15 1/2 x 19”.

In the Pacific Northwest, a leading beacon for Turner and many others concerned with how to reconcile aesthetic values with urgent social intentions was Jacob Lawrence. Following his 1970 move to the University of Washington School of Art (when he simply could not get hired on the East Coast), Lawrence’s use of flattened space, cubist forms, close-ranging colors, and the complete spectrum of historical and contemporary social issues became a paradigm. We see Lawrence’s influence flowering in Turner’s art, as well as in other artists such as Barbara Earl Thomas, Ronald Hall, Gene Gentry McMahon, Robert Colescott, and Roger Shimomura.

Li Turner, “Laundry Day & Tanks Don’t Mix,” 2025, watercolor and gouache, 15 1/4 x 21 1/4”.

Turner’s preference for small scale also echoes Lawrence, as does her use of opaque gouache and watercolor media. One Lawrence hallmark that attracted the men who hired him at the University was his intuition for perfect placement and composition. Turner’s careful positioning of her figures and their nestling of colors recall the Harlem master, but her palette is wider and more varied. Both formal qualities — composition and color — combine to reinforce her tightly focused subject matter.

Turner, who began as a dancer and later studied art at the University of Utah and UC Berkeley, here assembles a panoply of current issues. She addresses the challenge head-on to artists seeking to voice strong opinions on a particular challenge: how to avoid work becoming dated if and when the issue is solved or obviated. Turner’s fresh approach to each picture gives reason to believe her overall body of work will hold up over time.

Li Turner, “Annie Oakley and Friends Shoot Down Oppression,” 2019, watercolor and gouache, 18” X 18”.

Subtlety and indirection are two tools with which Turner address the natural decay in interest resulting from earnest overkill. For example, in “Laundry Day & Tanks Don’t Mix” (2025) a red-and-pink brick wall separates the upper and lower halves of the composition, as well as foregrounding the woman hanging clothes on a line. At the top, in the distance, tanks encroach. With an ameliorating humor, “Annie Oakley and Friends” (2019) are shooting down corsets on a city’s outskirts, divided by a white picket fence revealing suffragettes and protesters at the base. Similarly, with their backs to the viewer, “Angela Davis, Wilma Mankiller and Gloria Steinem Bay at the Moon” (2019) encases the trio of feminist icons in a big yellow circle. As with Lawrence, real-life historical figures are honored with heroic evocations.

Two large works featuring Barbie — a not-quite-real-life historical figure — place the iconic doll in unexpected settings. “Barbie in the Bullring” (2018) is both celebratory and exploitative with its howling crowd of men who may be seen as both cheering and leering. Bikini-clad Barbie is frozen in place, awaiting the release of the bull. Barbie also appears before a shop window in the similarly fraught “#Me, Too” (2018). Looking on are two men, one in a long coat exposing himself to her, the other ogling at the whole ugly spectacle while safely tucked into the lower right-hand corner. The largest canvas here is two by three feet in size. It suggests the potential benefit of expanding the size of her work, which too often feels constrained by its intimate size.

Li Turner, “Mother Earth Weeps as the World Fights for Life,” 2025, watercolor & gouache, 16” x 16”.

Taking on environmentalism, “Mother Earth Weeps as the World Fights for Life” (2025) is an allegorical image of a nude crouching with long hair concealing her face. She is posed astride three globes: a world map, three infants, and three nautilus seashells. Against a pale blue sky, Turner displays an ability to create visual myths of considerable conviction. 

In “Keys to Equality” (2025) a reclining reader is surrounded by tall stacks of books that include titles by women authors such as de Beauvoir, Alcott, Brontë, Cather, and Dorothy Parker. They offer literary parallels to the artist’s efforts, summed up by Emily Dickinson’s directive: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” In the painting’s lower left corner, veiled and kneeling Muslim women are immersed in reading books. Now banned from access to education in Afghanistan, their plight is recognized and pointed out by Turner. Thanks to simplified compositions and careful choices of subject, there is little that Turner has left out of her probing gaze at today’s world.

Matthew Kangas writes regularly for Visual Art Source eNewsletter; Ceramics: Art & Perception (Australia); and Preview (Canada). Besides reviewing for many years at Art in America, American Craft, Art Ltd., Vanguard and Seattle Times, he is the author of numerous catalogs and monographs, the latest being the award-winning Italo Scanga 1932-2001. Four anthologies of his critical essays, reviews and interviews were issued by Midmarch Arts Press (New York) and available on Amazon at Books by Matthew Kangas.