The Space welcomes visual journalist, photographer, writer, curator & researcher Akea Brionne as its 2021 Alumni Artist in Residence.
Alumni Artist in Residence_Akea Brionne
Akea Brionne is a visual journalist, photographer, writer, curator, and researcher whose personal work investigates the implications of historical racial and social structures in relation to the development of contemporary black life and identity within America. With a particular focus on the ways in which history influences the contemporary cultural milieu of the American black middle class, she explores current political and social themes, as they relate to historical forms of oppression, discrimination, and segregation in American history.
Akea Brionne has received the Visual Task Force Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Her work is also featured in the Smithsonian's Ralph Rinzler Collection and Archives. She was announced the 2018 Winner for Duke University’s Center for Documentary Arts Collection Award, as the 2018 Documentarian of Color. Her series, Black Picket Fences, was acquired for their permanent collection, and is on preserve at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. She was nominated for PDN's 30 (Photo District News) 2018: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch. Brown was also named the 2019 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Winner, juried by Laylah Ali, William Powhida, and Regina Basha.
In 2019, Akea Brionne co-founded Shades Collective and in 2020 co-founded Diary of Angry Black Women.
Akea received her BFA (2018) from the Maryland Institute College of Art, in the dual degree program of Photography and Humanities. She is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana and currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
Featured project_Black Picket Fences
Akea Brionne, Zoé (Black Picket Fences), 2019, Courtesy of the artist
Black Picket Fences encompasses environmental portraiture and documentary photographs of contemporary black households and the everyday lives of those who inhabit them. This body of work aims to highlight an often overlooked group in contemporary American culture: the black, suburban middle class.
While this group has not entirely been forgotten, it is hard to define. For some, these photographs might be the first and most intimate form of contact or interaction they might have with a black household. The work is largely inspired by one central question: If the ethos of the suburban landscape is largely understood as an ideologically “white” space, how do we begin to discuss the paradox of the black suburb and the ways in which is challenges the concept of whiteness and the suburban lifestyle?