Through conversation, meditation, and rediscovery of “lost pasts,” Jasmine Nyende uses art to explore and mediate her mother’s southern American roots and her father’s Ugandan genealogy. Incorporating paintings, fiber arts, performance, poetry, meditation, spoken word, and embroidered ready-to-wear clothes, Nyende manifests an alluring confluence of body, identity, and ancestry.
Crested Crane materializes through Nyende’s use of fibers and manifests a particular mending of personal identity that echoes throughout the body of work. For Nyende, art is a way to speak to ancestors while asserting her own individuality. Specifically, the crocheted and knitted works relate to the American history of Black female labor in the fiber arts. The web of soft textiles act as connective tissue, binding the vibrant images and colorways into a complex yet comprehensive family narrative that would otherwise be inaccessible. Crested Crane is on view through December 14 at AA|LA 7313 melrose avenue, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery