Jerome Nerman Lecture Series: Diedrick Brackens

Join us for a conversation with artist Diedrick Brackens, moderated by TK Smith

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Diedrick Brackens, shadows spell my name (detail), 2024, cotton and acrylic yarn, 102 x 134 in. Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS, Gift of Sue and Lewis Nerman, Leawood, KS. Image courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

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Join us for a conversation with textile artist Diedrick Brackens, guided by TK Smith, on Saturday, October 25, 4-5 p.m. Following the presentation, there will be a reception from 5–7 p.m. at the Museum’s atrium.

Brackens will discuss his large-scale weavings that incorporate myth and storytelling to highlight Black and Queer histories and bodies. Brackens is best known for his tapestries that explore allegory and narrative through autobiography, along with broader themes of African American and Queer identities and American history.

Brackens employs techniques from West African weaving, European tapestry-making, and quilting from the American South to create both abstract and figurative artworks. Often depicting moments of male tenderness, Brackens draws inspiration from African and African American literature, poetry and folklore.

Beginning his process by hand-dyeing cotton, a material he uses in acknowledgement of its brutal history, Brackens presents rich, nuanced visions of African American life and identity, while alluding to the complicated histories of labor and migration. Brackens utilizes both commercial dyes and atypical pigments such as wine, tea, and bleach to create his vibrant, intricately woven tapestries that investigate historical gaps, interlacing the present with his unique magical realist worldview.

Brackens received his MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. He is the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award, and a United States Artists Fellowship.

His work is held in the permanent collections of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.

Brackens’s work, shadows spell my name (2024), was recently acquired by the Nerman Museum thanks to the generosity of Sue and Lewis Nerman, and will be on view in the Museum’s permanent collection galleries.

For this program, Brackens will speak with TK Smith, a curator, writer, and cultural historian. Smith’s interdisciplinary research engages materiality to analyze art, identity, and culture. As a public scholar, he serves as a conduit between artists, ideas, and communities to produce thoughtful exhibitions, publications, and programs. He currently works as Curator, Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora, at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University.

The Jerome Nerman Lecture Series is generously underwritten by Central Bank of Kansas City and the Tutera Family.