Akea Brionne is an arts-based researcher working at the intersection of lens and textile media and artificial intelligence. Brionne's practice analyzes the contemporary consequences of Western colonial and imperial histories and their suppression of black and indigenous ways of life and being, specifically in the Americas and Caribbean. Her practice analyzes these themes by examining the byproducts of socialization under such systems and how the erasure of ancestral cultures and collective global histories manifest in contemporary identity politics. The themes explored in these topics include investigations of cultural assimilation as a means of survival, oral storytelling, and radical imagination as a means of preservation and knowledge dissemination/reclamation, migration (both forced and voluntarily) and its role in cultural immersion/fusion, and the performance of identity and its relationship to social geography. Brionne’s research is employed through the use of photographic history, textile design theory, and the intersectional use of artificial intelligence, digital collage, and textiles.

Brionne received a dual degree (BA/BFA) in Photography and Humanistic Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She received an MFA in Photography from the Cranbrook Academy of Art as a Gilbert Fellow. She is dually represented by Library Street Collective (Detroit) and Lyles & King (New York). Brionne is originally from New Orleans, was raised in Baltimore, and currently lives and works in Detroit.