In Divine Weightlessness, Thompson offers an exploration of identity, relationality, and the ongoing effects of colonial structures, alongside immersive investigations of the body-mind experience. Since beginning to identify as an artist in 2016, Thompson has explored two intertwined approaches. One investigates how Eurocentric and Euro-American colonial systems continue to shape our environments, institutions, and ideas of identity. The other focuses on creating visual and sonic patterns that center the present experience of the body and mind, offering a way to move beyond ingrained cultural conditioning.

The exhibition features a range of works across media and scale. In FREE MUMIA (2019), a photographic portrait taken on the streets of Oakland, a button depicting political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal draws attention to racialized systems and the ongoing persistence of injustice in the United States. In For Noah (2023), Thompson reimagines a bird’s-eye view of the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Museum near Joshua Tree, layering oil paint atop a photograph of Purifoy’s sculpture Untitled, Asylum. By referencing Purifoy (1917–2004), a post-war American artist and social worker known for creating assemblage sculptures from discarded materials, Thompson foregrounds the significance of the past as a lens for understanding the present, while responding to social and political issues such as the Watts Rebellion. This work blends memory, landscape, and abstraction, engaging with Purifoy’s legacy of resilience, activism, and inventive use of found objects, while exploring how historical context informs contemporary experience and agency. In The Meeting Place, a triptych of paintings takes inspiration from barkcloth paintings by the Mbuti people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, while other works on linen engage with Sara Ahmed’s concept of affect as 'traces left on the body and mind'. Site-specific etchings and installations throughout the gallery emphasize relationality, highlighting the presence of ancestors, communities, and the spaces we inhabit.

Says Thompson: "With this investigation, the gallery becomes a site for recognizing the constant labor and performance of the creation of an identity. That of my own, our elders and forebears, as well as the sites we all occupy.... I am inviting humans to engage with objects, histories, and each other—to recognize that our identities are intertwined and shaped by communal experiences."

Throughout the exhibition and residency, Thompson will activate the gallery through participatory performances and a cultural marketplace called Werk Day (Life Forms). On select days the artist will be present on-site for community and public engagement. Visit the gallery’s exhibition page for an updated schedule on ongoing performances and an artist talk.