The second season of Raw/Cooked presents a series of four exhibitions by under-the-radar Brooklyn artists who have been invited by the Brooklyn Museum with support from Bloomberg to show their first major museum exhibitions. The artists are given the opportunity to work with the Museum’s collection and to display in spaces of their choosing, however unconventional.

The four artists in the series were recommended by an advisory board of well-known Brooklyn artists, including Michael Joo, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Amy Sillman, and Mickalene Thomas, each of whom proposed several promising artists. Brooklyn Museum curator Eugenie Tsai made the final selections.

Raw/Cooked opens on November 16 with Rumination, an exhibition of the work of Bedford-Stuyvesant–based artist Duron Jackson, recommended by Thomas. Jackson’s multimedia installation evokes a private library or reading room, where viewers are invited to contemplate themes of race and power embedded in American history and culture. A minimalist white cube chair is situated at the center of a carpet, both constructed by the artist from black-and-white dominoes. Jackson’s Blackboard Paintings—large-scale geometric abstractions rendered in graphite and blackboard paint—cover the surrounding walls. These works present abstracted aerial views of specific American prisons. Jackson juxtaposes his abstract works with Malvina Hoffman’s early modern sculptural portrait, Senegalese Soldier. Drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, Hoffman’s larger-than-life-sized bust stands at the center of the installation. In Rumination, Jackson brings together historical and contemporary cultural representations to explore the inter-related histories of incarceration, surveillance, and control.

Raw/Cooked is organized by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.