KAMARIA SHEPHERD    she/her/hers

 

Born August 1991 

Based in Houston, Texas

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My work subtly revolves around issues of identity, memory, race, culture, womanhood, and femininity as an African American woman in the United States and beyond while the pieces themselves wave between minimal and excess, bold and subtle, loud and intimate, to speak or not to speak. I simultaneously write about my work and the thoughts surrounding the processes of my work in a hybrid of poems, personal narratives, and short stories. I use found materials such as clothing, bath rugs, and pearl earrings, giving citation to the presence of a body, a female, domesticity. 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. Thus, each piece can be shown in a group installation or individually like a second grader ready to present for show-and-tell. They perform.