Diedrick
Brackens
He // Him // His
[ID: Diedrick, a young Black man, tilts his head gently to one side and gazes at the camera. His face is half-immersed in shadow.]
Los Angeles, CA
2021 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Diedrick Brackens is an LA-based textile artist, originally from Mexia, Texas. Brackens draws from a variety of textile traditions, including elements of European pictorial tapestry, West African strip-weaving, and quilts of the American South. Brackens renders his painstakingly woven textiles primarily in cotton, a material inextricably charged with America’s continued history of racialized violence and labor. His oeuvre synthesizes folklore, history, and contemporary American life into fantastical scenes where Black bodies engage in moments of intimacy, prayer, and defiant repose. He received his Masters of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art; Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; among others. Brackens has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize in 2018 and the Marciano Artadia Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award in 2019.
Portrait photo by Alex Hodor Lee.
flying geese, 2020. Woven cotton and acrylic yarn, dimensions 106 × 96 inches. Image courtesy of Various Small Fires, Los Angeles and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.[ID: Three figures, two black and the other neon pink, kneel under a gnarled, violet tree. Their arms are outstretched in a ritualistic dance. Above them, a turquoise outline of the moon floats in a navy sky.]
ward no 2. be careful, 2020, Woven cotton and acrylic yarn, dimensions 79 × 80 ½ inches. Image courtesy of Various Small Fires, Los Angeles and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.[ID: A red and black German Shepherd leaps into the air against a red-gridded background, woven with variegated Turquoise yarn subtly striped with washes of green, violet and dark blue.]
when no softness came, 2019. Woven cotton and acrylic yarn, dimensions 96 × 96 inches. Image courtesy of Various Small Fires, Los Angeles and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.[ID: A green figure rendered in variegated stripes reclines on the back of a white horse mid-gallop against a red sky. The ground is composed of alternating red and green interpenetrating blocks of color.]