ARTIST STATEMENT
As a black artist, my pictorial works are often used as a conduit that explores themes of identity, gender, race, sexuality, and culture. My work is deeply emotional and its thought-provoking captures, invite an allure and beauty that are alternately used to channel my commentaries toward societal norms that overlook the intersectionality within the bounds of black bodies. “J’s Gaze,” says “I am here, I am as I am and I see you.” She looks at you in what may be contempt but is an everlasting sternness over one potential appraisal over her, in which she severs with a gaze that is solid and unbreakable. This work is embodied by the intuitive nature within to create and say something with my work.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Elizabeth Sarpong is an emerging Fine Arts Photographer, from Chicago Illinois. She is a Ghanaian-American artist who works primarily in the medium of Digital Photography. Sarpong’s work is a force to be reckoned with, as she contends with real-life issues in the realm of her blackness and on a broader spectrum. Growing up in a Ghanaian household, Sarpong’s work draws heavily upon her heritage and identity as a conduit for her art. She first became interested in Photography at the young age of 15 and has been honing her craft ever since. Her visionary works tell the story of many, shedding light on pressing matters such as the neglect of black women within society. Sarpong’s stylistic choices and intentional connotations create alluring images that are powerful in their attempt to disrupt one’s perception with beauty and thought-provoking questions. Her work challenges the markers of her identity prescribed onto her by society, such as her blackness and womanhood, and presents them as elegies that question and redefine what it means to be a young black creative voice.
© Elizabeth Sarpong