Through a deep devotion to portraiture, my work creates crystalized moments of an imagined future in which black women are protected and adorned.

Deeply influenced by trailblazers of vulnerability, such as canonical artist Carrie Mae Weems and R&B legend Mary J. Blidge, my practice pays homage to the incredible magnetism that comes from unfiltered truth. Ruminating on harmful and life threatening biases, I critically engage issues of systematic racism, beauty politics, and internalized stereotypes to widen the aperture of emotionality perceived in black womanhood.

Through large scale self portraits, I present myself in varying states of processing, presenting, and performing. Like Weems’s Kitchen Table Series, I become a protagonist in a journey towards utter empowerment, inching closer to crystalized moments of an imagined future in which black women are protected and adorned.  

In smaller works, a hand sculpted clay frame acts as a portal to this imagined future. Briefly granting the viewer access to fleeting moments of free feeling. I consider every frame to be the breadth of emotionality found in black womanhood personified. Whimsical yet structured, soft yet firm. Seen through a thick haze of rich reds, pinks, and purples are evanescent portraits of black women safely expressing joy, pleasure, power, distress, and desire. 

In this complex and dimensional reclamation of vulnerability, I aim to bridge the gap between our current world and an imagined future in which blackness and free expression are not painfully linked.

Tianna Bracey received a Bachelors of Art in Art History from the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO). Her work has been exhibited at The deYoung Museum (San Francisco, CA), CSUSB Anthropology Museum (San Bernardino, CA), Root Division (San Francisco, CA), Soft Times (San Francisco, CA) The Chicago Athletic Association (Chicago, IL), and The South Side Community Art Center (Chicago, IL). In 2021, she was awarded the Curious Creators Grant from curious elixirs (Brooklyn, NY) and the New Futures award from Saatchi Art’s The Other Art Fair (London, UK). In 2022, she was a recipient of the SPARK Grant from the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL).

She now lives and works in San Francisco, CA.