June 25th - August 26th, 2017
Co-curated w/ Rezina Habtemariam
View exhibit HERE
Reception and Reading - August 5th 5 to 9pm
Matters of Inheritance illuminates the serpentine process of constantly making and mending ourselves from legacies of violence that constructs Black womanhood as the antithesis of human. Through ornate paintings and fabric assemblages, Brianna McCarthy examines the internal atrocities caused by centuries of colonial mythology brutally imposed on our bodies. McCarthy confronts the ways Black women are taught to be dim, to be small, and to be soft while carrying the trauma of generations shattered by a world that does not want us alive.
This collection builds an archive that conjures contradictions of rage and tenderness that live in our bones despite, or maybe because of, the relentless attempt to take what is ours. We inherit partitioned homelands and displaced selves. We inherit ancestral memories of living while being hunted. We inherit lineages of women who practiced radical love, still. And we continue rituals of making and mending ourselves from this haunting so we can pass on matters of inheritance rooted in the beauty, abundance, and liberation of our whole being
Matters of Inheritance will feature a published collection of poetry written in response to McCarthy’s striking work.
Writers include: Anastacia-Reneé, Naa Akua,
Helen K. Thomas, Ashley Davis, Amy Alvarez, Tatiana Zamir, and Rezina Habtemariam.
About Brianna McCarthy
Brianna McCarthy is a mixed media visual communicator working and living in Trinidad + Tobago. She is a self-taught artist and aims to create a new discourse examining issues of beauty, stereotypes, representation as well as the documenting the process – particularly poignant in an ever smaller digitally connected world. Her form takes shape through masking and performance art, fabric collage, traditional media, and installation pieces.