ARTIST STATEMENT
"I explore Black consciousness, creative force, and imagination as sites of freedom. Using visual space as a generative terrain for imagining and inhabiting alternative realities beyond imposed constructs."
About the artist
Devynn Barnes (b.1993, Seattle) is an Oakland-based painter and visual archivist. A self-taught painter, Barnes draws on her background in film and photography to inform a multi-dimensional, cinematic body of work. By melding documentation with artistic expression, she invites viewers to confront their own narratives, encouraging a collective awakening, communal (melanated) homecoming and admittance to our interconnected archives.
"The portrait pieces honor artists of this time and beyond it, artists for whom art becomes a key to a homeplace beyond the visible. Throughout the work, there is an insistence on being acknowledged, alongside a vulnerability in allowing the viewer to bear witness."
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Schlomer Haus, San Francisco; Manna Gallery, Oakland; Casemore Gallery, San Francisco.
Available artworks
Exhibitions
"My pieces offer glimpses into moments of Afrosurreal conjure"
