I am a visual artist living and working in Irvington, NJ. I use paint, mixed media, and clay to create art objects that seek to honor Black, Queer spirituality, liberation, and autonomy in the physical and metaphysical planes.
I am interested in Black queer people’s physical and metaphysical well-being and self-understanding. “Black” and “queer” are signifiers that have been used to inflict violence, but to also to create homes: communal and psychological protection from violent, oppressive systems, and as a space to process and release the power dynamics and harmful ideologies that these systems instill on an individual and collective level.
I create vignettes of a psyche shaped by Black, queer spirituality, liberation, and autonomy, and the cycles of trauma and healing that come with them. I intend for each piece to act as a portal, traversing time and space and guiding the viewer to a different emotional state, experience, or understanding of the physical and metaphysical, the earthly and the intangible. I utilize the introspective potential of darkness and the erotic materiality of paint, clay, and mixed media to create pieces that reflect Afrofuturistic ideas of beauty, intimacy, spirituality, and lineage. Association with the cosmos, environmental forms, textures of the black body, and materials associated with Black adornment bring the viewer into a visual landscape where blackness and queerness holds multiplicity, even within a limited space.
I incorporate craft and beauty materials and techniques in my work to embrace legacies of embodied empowerment and historically devalued and gendered labor and modes of creativity. The work celebrates self-adornment, ancestry, self-awareness, and the complexity and beauty of individual experiences - emotional, sensual, generational, and more - with an awareness of the ability of blackness and queerness to subvert hierarchical and oppressive systems on a collective and interpersonal level. My work revels in the integrated space where we acknowledge the negative impacts of oppression and violence on our bodies, minds, and spirits while embracing the parts of ourselves that resist and dismantle that bondage through already being free.
Contact:
Christa.B.Pratt@gmail.com
Resume.
EDUCATION
RESIDENCIES/FELLOWSHIPS
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
RELATED WORK EXPERIENCE
- Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY — BFA Fine Arts Painting, Class of 2014
RESIDENCIES/FELLOWSHIPS
- 2019 NYC Crit Club Fellowship, New York, NY
- 2017 Artist-in-Residence, Museum of Arts and Design’s Artist Studios Program, New York, NY
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
- 2022 Group Show; The Bone That Sings Was Mine - ChaShaMa, New York, NY; Curated by Defne Tutus
- 2021 Cover Art for Poetry Chapbook; Fist of Wind by Nefertiti Asante - Foglifter Press
- 2020 New Wave – Anna Zorina Gallery; New York, NY
- 2019 Group Show; In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: We Made Armor - Sediment Arts, Richmond, VA, Curated by Mahari Chabwera [YouTube: Artist Talk]
- 2019 Commissioned Backdrop Painting for Performance; Hawa: The Ride – MATCH Houston; Houston, TX
- 2019 Group Show; Origins – The Art Vacancy/ChaShaMa; New York, NY
- 2018 Three-Person Show; Black Winter – Arts EastNY; Brooklyn, NY
- 2017 Solo Exhibit; C.W.M: Parable – Playground Coffee Shop Annex; Brooklyn, NY
- 2017 Group
Show; Planet X: An All-Female Lifestyle
Art Show – Space X; Brooklyn
-
2017 Group
Show; Passion vs. Pragmatism – Studio
301/The Art Vacancy; Brooklyn
-
2017 Group
Show; Women’s Work: A Festival of Art
& Wellness – MINKA Brooklyn
-
2016 Group
Show; WAYFAIR – Goldilocks Gallery; Philadelphia, PA
-
2016 Group
Show; Modern Goddesses – World Money
Gallery; Brooklyn
-
2016 Group Show; Through the Rabbit Hole IV – Sideshow Gallery; Williamsburg,
NY
-
2015 Two-Person Show; Vortex/Clarity – Warehouse Gallery; Red Hook,
Brooklyn
-
2014 Group
Show; One or More, Part II – Kunsthalle Galapagos Gallery; Brooklyn
-
2014 Group
Show; 13/1 – Warehouse Pop-Up Gallery; Brooklyn
-
2014 Senior
Thesis Three-Person Show; DON’T START WITH ME. -
Pratt Institute Brooklyn
- 2013 Salon Group Show - Palisades906, Brooklyn
RELATED WORK EXPERIENCE
-
HR Coordinator, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY – March 2019-current
- Office Assistant, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY – March 2019-current
- Paint Specialist/Asst. Store Manager, Guerra Paint & Pigment Corp., New York,
NY – July 2014-March 2019
-
Intern, New York Foundation for the Arts Curatorial Department, Brooklyn, NY–
May 2014-August 2014
- Intern, Warehouse Gallery, Brooklyn, NY — March 2014-May 2014