1/24
"SHE NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION, SHE IS SITTING RIGHT THERE"
"WHERE?"
"THERE… ALL AROUND YOU"
from Love, Au Nun fulfilled, a play by Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE
Our aim is to shift the visual conversation
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, Every Sunbeam will be Tested ( Sept 2022), No. 1/ 24 from "Prophetic Charcoal Dreams" (September 2022)
12 x 16 in
charcoal, oil and chalk pastel, ink on paper
Kehinde Wiley, Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare, Wangechi Mutu — just to name a few of the great contemporary Black artists in our time whose works, techniques, and styles are as broad as the Back of the Universe.
The common line-through, however: figurative artists representing, blessing and honoring Black and Brown bodies
Naturally, the great contemporary Black artists in our Time are creating MASSIVE paintings.
Huge
HUUUUUUUUUGE!
Stamping the beautiful extremities of their sunbursting Spirits into space and exhaling,
“I AM HERE”
As they should 😌
We will define “great” in two ways:
First, artists whose work is,
a. selling for 4-6 figures at established art auctions and galleries around the world, and b. being purchased and displayed by museums, art institutions and notable collectors.
Secondly, artists whose artwork is defining an era.
Kahinde Wiley. The man who brushed Black and Brown bodies onto linen, bronze, and glass and reimagined Olympus as Our divine Sanctuary. Kara Walker, a narrator whose ability to harrow bodies into the present spaces of Our history inspires my desire to sharpen the Truth of my own story.
Wangechi Mutu. Flesh transcending into ether to divine the celestial anomaly of thought. Worlds which we cannot uneven…
"If thy brain hurts, thy brain is expanding 😌" (RIOA)
The established convention of Meaning Making defaults unimaginatively. Even words are oddities.
Our aim is to shift the visual conversation
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, Hope, A Sisyphean Workout, from The Birth of the Sun from the River (Summer 2021)
8.5 x 5.5 in
oil pastel on paper
There are very few Black non-figurative abstract expressionists
As I acknowledge the vital importance of immortalizing the embodied lives and cultures of Black and Brown people in art, I wonder, I wonder if we aren’t being defined as an artistic generation in the contemporary 21st century.
What is now?
There is a predominantly you-know-who art world hungry to consume 2^3 dimensional Black and Brown shapes, figures and lines. Bodies.
Little pledges.
Little tokens.
And we as Black and Brown artists, recreating a supply for the demand.
Heave through the river of sales receipts.
Do the math.
Regurgitation
Most of my research for abstract artwork by Black and Brown artists is met with reintegrations of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s style — figurative “primitivist” style (we’ll unpack that word at another time, babes, I’m on a word budget)
Figurative
Always
Figurative
As a form, as a symbol, the Black body will always sell
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, detail from Resilient Joy: Unconditional Love ( June 2021)
1932 x 2576
digital art, Non-Fungible Token
In a post-pandemic world, when Truth has left a scattering of marginalized bodies
The auction continues
They are ready to purchase
To pledge their tokens
"No, not me -- me I support..."
As a form, as a symbol, the Black body will always sell
The mediums has shifted
The story is the same
And yes, perhaps, it is a callous refining itself in the city with more BLM signs than Black people
So allow me to exhale and exclaim That nevertheless, nevertheless
Wherever you are, the story is the same
This is a contemplation on the Symbology of Black and Brown Bodies
If the medium is the message
Then I am reclaiming my form
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, NFT of a final farewell to the pain I called home from "resilient joy, a t. table book ( June 2021)
600 x 200 (compressed for access)
digital art, Non-Fungible Token
What if I wish
What if I wish not to sell the shapes of my flesh
Leathery thick velvety smooth chocolatey brown
Skin as red as Kenyan soil
ALL DIRT IS DIRT
What if I wish
Obsidian Black Charcoal Blue tears and tears ripping down my back
Crack your mind just a little bit more open
Whack
Thwack
Smack
VIRGIN SNACK
There is an ebbing and growing frustration that the art market will not value my Black experience if it is abstracted into non-figurative expressionism
So here I AM
Putting in the work
Sowing seeds of Fractions of Light
Shifting
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, Titled Sunbeam V ( Summer 2021), from "Sunberries, Moon Blubs, and the Life and Death of Pastel Purple" (Summer 2021)
8.5 x 11.5 in
oil pastel on paper
Our aim is to rift the civil conversation
There are very few prolific Black non-figurative abstract expressionists
And so and so and so
And so, as such….
🌞FOCUS🌞
Gaze
Past the melanin
Deep into the Black Memory Tape unfurling in these eyes
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, detail from Every Sunbeam will be tested ( Sept 2022), No. 1/ 24 from "Prophetic Charcoal Dreams" (September 2022)
12 x 16 in
charcoal, oil and chalk pastel, ink on paper
Our aim is to shift the visual condensation
LOVE
LIFE LIGHT
Lift back into the recesses of Nothing
Let Her shave your dermal shroud
CHAOS, Mother to us all
The shade of the skin of OUR teeth is an entropic joust with Death, Grief, and the Pursuit of Timelessness
WE ARE shifting the visual contestation
Nothing New, Something Old
No Originality, Just Iteration
Right here, Right Now
I humbly Present,
“Prophetic Charcoal Dreams”
24 abstract expressionist charcoal-centered mixed media drawings
Smol absurdist infinities
No big like Wiley, Oh
No big like Odutola, Walker, Mutu, Shinabare, or Fawudu
Smol like an overflowing teacup
12 by 16
Ripples
4 (12 by 18)
The Great Waves which shape mountains into Generations
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, detail from Every Sunbeam will be tested ( Sept 2022), No. 1/ 24 from "Prophetic Charcoal Dreams" (September 2022)
12 x 16 in
charcoal, oil and chalk pastel, ink on paper
Huge shout out to Julie Mehretu, Skunder Boghossian, Joseph Ntensibe, Hussein Shariffe, tho
There are very few Black non-figurative abstract expressionists
But the road less travelled has been paved
Nothing new, just iteration I AM guided by ancestors
🌞🤲🏽
And just so you know
If I wanted to I could
But They would consume it all as they did my body whence once I placed it on a stage
For 20 years, I tore my soul between their eyes
Rip
Rack
Crock pot in a stew
And they ate it all up
And just so you know, just so you know...
If I wanted to I could
But I already did
20 whole years of selling a body to hungry eyes
How I revealed in every minute of their energetic cannibalism
Colonialism
And now I am moving on
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, What you can expect next from me is the completed work for your approval ( Nov 11, 2022)
dimensions vary
oil pastel, and apparently a banana on paper
Oh look, I did it again
Pushing pushing pushing and pushing pushing pushing
The Black of my figure and hoping that they clap
Snap
Crackle
"Smile like a jazz square"
Attack
Let me crumple Our brains instead
I promise it will be pretty
Gentle stabs and
Exquisite pressure
Visual Consternation
Explosive emotional constipation
Please share your thoughts, feelings and sensations
Gift your comments
And let’s shift and grow together
Close your eyes, give me your hand, bestie
Do you feel my heart bleating
Do you understand
We’re on a mission to see, our heavenly Gog
Wag tails, wail gods
Did deeper into discomfort
And unearth something quite quite…
The vacuous empty universe from which we were all Born
Our Mommy, Nothing
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, A Boy and His Kite (June 18, 2021, 9:17pm)
12 x 16 in
digital photograph
Nothing
Streetname: Lil’ Mama CHAOS
The original bad biddie
Nada
She didn’t care nun ‘bout shift’n’ no conversational tones
Tiddie and Eternal Flame
Lady Dada
SHE done said what needed to be said
SHE done done what needed to be done
STIFF WHERE?
It’s the Black Ribbon of TIME
STIFFFFFF
WHEREEEEEEEEE??
Playful, playful, playful
CHAOS
She’s wrapped all around you
A finite eternity of Darkness from which we did
LIFT Our LIFE,
and LOVE
Every Sunbeam Will be Tested
Light
-🌞🤲🏽
Brandt Maina | RIOA wa RIOE, detail from Every Sunbeam will be tested ( Sept 2022), No. 1/ 24 from "Prophetic Charcoal Dreams"
12 x 16 in
charcoal, oil and chalk pastel, ink on paper
——————
"Though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted, in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic, to be young gifted and black."
Lorraine Hansberry, to a group of young writers in 1964
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References,
(I am an absurdist writer -- but never unprofessional
STIFFFFF WHEEEEEENNNNNNST
Bestie, you #know better.com
Creation: A RIOA Curation
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