Lenworth McIntosh: Come When Mi Call Yu

OCHI is pleased to present Come When Mi Call Yu, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Lenworth McIntosh. 

Come When Mi Call Yu imagines a Black commune living in a verdant rural valley, anticipating a natural phenomenon that takes on the form of a storm. Drawing on his Jamaican heritage and the visual language of animation, McIntosh renders an otherworldly atmosphere where the spiritual and living planes fuse into a single, collaborative ecosystem. He positions ancestral knowledge as an omnipresent force in everyday life and the Black diaspora as a source of collective energy.

As the impending storm brews on the horizon, McIntosh’s figures remain steadfastly anchored in the power of communal and spiritual connection. Here, ghostlike presences guide people at work; a man tends to large pots of soup to nourish the collective; and elderly church women gather in chorus as light radiates from their song. The scenes move between memory and invention as McIntosh draws on the Caribbean Nine Nights wake tradition, where loved ones come together over shared food, music, and stories to celebrate the life of the departed and guide their spirit to the ancestral realm on the ninth night after their passing. McIntosh visualizes the communal and celebratory essence of Nine Nights in the storm’s climactic arrival, rendering spirits and the living as they dissolve into the clouds, their arms cutting through the air in unrestrained dance.

The visual language of animation functions as an invitation, using the familiar codes of cartoon imagery to draw viewers toward the works’ deeper emotional and spiritual undercurrents. McIntosh’s exaggerated, distorted figures imbue the canvas with dynamic movement. Guided by his childhood memories of life in Jamaica, he approaches composition anthropologically, constructing scenes from shifting, cinematic vantage points. McIntosh maps emotion through color, grounding the work in an earthly palette reminiscent of rural Jamaica, with soft transitions between tones evoking the subtle presence of the other side.

While rooted in McIntosh’s Jamaican heritage and resonant across the diaspora, Come When Mi Call Yu ultimately gestures toward a broader human truth about the enduring strength of community and ancestral connection.