Artwork
#Akea Brionne
#reminiscence
#portraits
#surreal
#tapestry
#textiles
March 29, 2024
Grace Ebert
Woven into Akea Brionne’s glimmery Afro-surrealist tapestries is an impulse towards sustainability. With a level within the topic and a follow rooted in analysis, the Detroit-based artist started contemplating easy methods to reduce waste whereas growing pictures. Curbing consumption turned a grounding precept that goes past materials extra, extending to “concepts, conceptions, ideas, and methods of being,” she tells Colossal.
Engaged on digital jacquard weavings, Brionne stitches rhinestones to clothes, tiled flooring, and different particulars, including a component of decadence to every tapestry. Lots of the portraits proven right here have been on view not too long ago at Lyles & King in New York for Brionne’s solo present, Roses Develop in Southern Soil, and examine “her grandfather’s journey between Mississippi and New Mexico within the Nineteen Seventies on the tail finish of The Nice Migration.” She is within the lingering results of colonialism and the African Diaspora, significantly because it pertains to reminiscence and the way tales are handed from one technology to the subsequent.
Whether or not centered on a single nameless topic or a small group in entrance of expansive our bodies of water, the works are infused with an eerie sense of the uncanny, subtly unsettling the acquainted. “I additionally take into consideration extra by way of seeing a considerable amount of representations of Blackness that felt restrictive, so I try to fight that and supply some variety,” the artist provides.
Brionne’s work can be on view with Lyles & King at EXPO CHICAGO this April and in a gaggle exhibition MassArt Artwork Museum opening in June. Keep up to date along with her work on Instagram.
#Akea Brionne
#reminiscence
#portraits
#surreal
#tapestry
#textiles
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