KAMARIA SHEPHERD | She Learned Herself Awake
July 10 through August 28, 2021
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 10, 6-9 pm
Bermudez Projects is pleased to present Kamaria Shepherd | She Learned Herself Awake, the second exhibit in the gallery’s new series of installation-based exhibits dedicated solely to BIPOC + LGBTQIA artists.
Composed with layers of fabric, plastic, small paintings on paper, and small sculptures, “She Learned Herself Awake” explores the myriad facets of self, identity, and emergence. Within this site-specific installation, fabrics digitally printed from photographs of the artist and by the artist, as well as from photographs of the artist’s paintings, Shepherd creates a deeply intimate space that is both engaging and eluding.
The “she” which exists in the space of the artwork is the artist. However, the artist’s image is used as either a symbol or repetitive print of a black woman.
Shepherd says, “Using this self-portrait as a motif addresses an often singular and one-dimensional stereotype of black womanhood in the United States. This universal “she” is being slowly awakened through the mediation of self and photograph, painting and installation, and artist and audience.”
Kamaria Shepherd’s (b. 1991, USA) artwork subtly touches on issues of identity, memory, race, culture, womanhood, and femininity as an African American woman in the United States. Paintings, prints, sculpture, video, poetry, and installations vacillate between minimal and excess; bold and subtle; loud and intimate. Shepherd writes about her work and the thoughts surrounding the processes, resulting in a hybrid of poetry/personal narrative/short story. In using found materials – clothing, bath rugs, pearl earrings – the artist gives citation to the “presence of a body, a female, and domesticity.”
Shepherd says, “I make paintings as objects, sculptures, or painted sculptural paintings. My sculptural paintings are called play-doh’s and are installed in ways where they make connections or conversations with each other while representing their own distinct personalities, like the parts of a person.” This approach allows individual works to be displayed singularly, as a whole thought; or grouped together in an installation, conversing. “[It’s] like a second-grader ready to present for show-and-tell. They perform.”
Shepherd earned a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Painting/Drawing from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her works have been included in group and solo exhibits throughout the United States. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
She Learned Herself Awake is the second exhibit in the gallery’s new series of installation-based exhibits dedicated solely to BIPOC + LGBTQIA artists. Funding is provided by the Bermudez Projects Exhibitions Fund and Bermudez Projects Collectors.
Additional support by MORALES + MORALES