GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - As ArtPrize 10 wraps up, the artists are getting a final chance to show people their artwork. One of those individuals is Le'Andra LeSeur from New Jersey.
LeSeur received her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2014. Her work explores black identity informed by the effects that regulated systems of oppression have on black women. LeSeur has participated in exhibitions throughout the Southeast including "On Being Black" at Arnika Dawkins Gallery in 2015.
LeSeur was the recipient of the 2017 Contemporary Black Art award at ArtPrize 9 in Grand Rapids, MI for her piece, "Searching", and her work is featured in permanent and private collections throughout the southeast.
Beyond her own work, LeSeur also makes notable contributions to the arts through her active participation in curating exhibitions and workshops for women of color that speak to the power of existing through expression in a world that shuns black women for those exact actions.
Le'Andra ArtPrize 10 piece is called "brown, carmine, and blue."
"brown, carmine, and blue" is a reflection of LeSeur's undying quest to break down power constructs that have continuously ostracized the very things that she identifies with: blackness, queerness, and her femininity. She is concerned with the spectacle that has ensued as a reaction to black joy and black trauma, simultaneously, and how this has further created generalizations of what blackness truly is. Through engaging social commentary, her hope is to reclaim and dismantle stereotypes surrounding black identity through the reworking of conventional art forms and mundane objects - ultimately reshaping the context of spaces where the lives of the oppressed are silenced and celebrated in the same breath.
For more information on Le'Andra's previous ArtPrize entries, you can click here.
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