Jamila Rahimi + Jessi Binder: Equinox

November 8, 2025 – January 24, 2026

The equinox—the time of year when day and night are of approximately equal length—is referenced for this exhibition of work by Art Enables artist Jamila Rahimi and visiting artist Jessi Binder. Though the artists are not precisely yin and yang, the title is a nod to the ways in which their works seem to be opposite sides of the same, energetic coin. Both artists create abstract paintings that are alive with crowds of colorful, organic shapes, obscuring or subtly revealing discernible subjects through abstraction. The works feel decidedly related to each other, although Binder’s work is often effusively bright, and darkness dominates in many of Rahimi’s paintings. “Light” and “dark” have been used countless times as symbols of “good” and “bad,” day and night. But Rahimi’s and Binder’s work, especially viewed together, offer a conversation of dualities and inversions that cannot be contained in such simple parameters.

Binder’s abstract paintings are composed of loose, expressive brushwork. Many small lines and shapes build on each other to create the whole, interplaying as parts of a larger system. Her work gives the impression of peering through the banal surface of a thing to reveal its molecular or emotional components in the act of creating its essence. The paintings feel intuitive and improvisational, shifting and unbound. They are like confetti in boiling water or a colorful landscape seen through the space-bending shimmer of heat waves.

Rahimi’s ink and watercolor works can also be described as abstract, intuitive, and accumulative. But where Binder’s accumulation builds through painterly brushstrokes, Rahimi creates organic shapes through determined outlining of her subjects in black ink, to the point at which the outlines may overtake the original subject they were meant to define. This process can result in compositions of almost entirely black ink, with small slivers of remaining space filled with color. Despite the dense enclosures, Rahimi’s compositions are not constrained or strangled. Rather, her shapes are natural and even exuberant. In places, they feel springy and responsive, assembled in stacks that might shift and give way as much as they gently hold each other in place. Even the blackness itself is alive, with swooping, directional markings subtly visible to the eye.

Together, the artists’ works offer changing, prismatic views. From one perspective, subject matter comes apart at the seams or is buried in overgrown borders. From another, these supposed disruptions are the subject matter: negative space becomes positive, a thin line becomes an ocean in which we can swim. Light cannot exist without darkness. And these works also say: Sometimes darkness can illuminate, and what’s bright can obscure what we expected to see. In all cases, the works invite us to see and feel and see differently, again. As we look, surprising new images bloom, equal parts velvet shadow and buoyant light.

Jamila Rahimi’s compositions fluctuate between representation and abstraction, and are formed from vibrant shapes of watercolor that she defines with dense outlines in black ink. Rahimi has been a resident artist at Art Enables in Washington, DC since 2006, exhibiting her work regularly at Art Enables and other galleries around DC and the country. 

Jessi Binder creates abstract paintings rooted in improvisation, memory, and process. Recent area show venues include WPA (DC), ICA (Baltimore), The Reinstitute (Baltimore), Rhizome (DC), but, also (DC), and Latela Curatorial (DC). Her work has been acquired by collections including Capital One and Superfrico Las Vegas. She lives and works in Takoma Park, MD.