ARTIST STATEMENT
Utilizing memory, word (oral and written tradition), and material object, my work aims to bridge the gap between the ancestral, traditional, and regenerated lives of African Americans who have been a part of the Great Migration. As a poetry and prose writer first, I am interested in the ways physicality aids us in tactile processing. Creating objects using textiles, ceramics, bookmaking, or paint, I am able to speak life into written word on the page. In other words, I aim to bring storytelling to the front of my practice by creating and providing physical examples, experiences, and textures that represent a journey––a way to process intergenerational movement, healing, and resolve. In my collage-making practice, I use photos from my archive––taken by myself or pulled from a family album––as a visual aid to communicate complex feelings of grief, difficulties navigating the passage of time, and nostalgia.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Talia Kimberly Wright (they/them and she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer born and raised on the Southside of Chicago. They are a 2019 Pink Door Fellow, 2022 Roots. Wounds. Words. Fellow, a current artist in residence with DIVINE Art Book, and a fiction reader at ANMLY Lit. They have been published in In These Times, Hooligan Magazine, beestung Magazine and more. They are a Sundress Broadside contest finalist and have been nominated for Best-of-Net and Pushcart Prize awards. Their work is informed by Blackness, the great migration, and spending summer afternoons dancing under their grandparents’ Mulberry tree; their goal is to weave new tales using ancestral and learned knowledge with the intention of adding to the canon of Afro-Surrealism. They have a degree in multimedia journalism from Columbia College Chicago, where they also studied cultural studies. Currently, you can find them working on their MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
© Talia Kimberly Wright