Lindsay Adams has been on a journey to become exactly who she wants to be, as a Black woman with a disability and as an artist. She’s learned that there’s beauty in owning those multiple aspects of her identity — and she named her first solo exhibit in honor of that realization. “Two Things Can Be True” opens tonight at Eaton DC.

“I’ve had a conversation with myself about not only who I am, but what I want to say and be said about me,” Adams tells DCist. “I came to a conviction of sorts that I want to be able to show up as my full self, no matter what table I’m sitting at.”

Her new exhibit at the Eaton DC hotel explores the intersection of race and identity through vivid still-life and floral oil paintings. She drew inspiration from Langston Hughes’ 1926 essay The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. Hughes writes: “We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs … We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”

This duality is at the core of Adams’ show, which is on view through Oct. 14.

“When problems would come up in life, I would often say, ‘Well, you know, two things can be true at once,” Adams says. “One thing is not limited to just black and white.”

Adams, 31, has cerebral palsy, a motor disability that affects her speech, movement, and balance. As she told District Fray Magazine in 2020: “I can’t put on earrings. I can barely button my shirts. But I can paint my ass off.”

Adams was born in D.C., grew up in Prince George’s County, and graduated from Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, where she majored in drawing and painting. At age 4, she began doodling all the time, and her parents, recognizing her gift, sent her to art camps at local institutions like the Corcoran School.

After graduating from the University of Richmond with a dual-degree in international studies and Spanish, and a minor in studio arts, Adams worked for 10 years as a management consultant and did commercial art on the side. Recently, she decided to quit her job and pursue art full time. “I’m excited to be able to show up to the studio and the canvas 100%,” she says.

For now, her studio is her dining room at her home in LeDroit Park — but in the fall, Adams will head to the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the nation’s leading fine arts schools, for a postgraduate program. 

Adams says her paintings, which place Black women as the centerpiece within intimate, floral settings, explore the “nuance of humanhood.” Disability may not be visible in the paintings themselves, but in that way, they imitate life — her own disability is not easily seen.

Adams has long been an advocate for people with disabilities, penning essays about her experience and building a CV of activism and public speaking.

“People with disabilities are often left out of the conversation,” Adams said in a statement. “[Painting] has been my own form of communication — my peace and my protest.”

“Two Things Can Be True,” a product of the Eaton’s cultural arm, Eaton Workshop, is located in the hotel’s Crystal Hallway. In another nod to the title of the show, guests are invited at the entryway to read four original poems by Adams, who is a poet as well as a painter. Past the entrance, the main exhibit features six figurative works anchored by two floral paintings. (Check out a preview here.)

“The title of the show and body of work displays that I am more than one thing,” Adams explains. “My art is more than one thing, and it’s inspired and evolved from more than one thing.”

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“Two Things Can Be True,” April 29 – Oct. 14; Eaton DC, 1201 K St. NW; Opening reception, April 29, 7 – 10 p.m.