BREANNA THOMPSON
Not Broken. 2023, Mixed media; acrylic resin, paint, muslin.
Creatively interprets the experience of Alvin:
“I want to show them how the system is built really. How it's crooked. I want it to show the good side [of me], not what the courts see me as.”
Alvin spoke of his aspirations and his will to move past his mistakes. Alvin also expressed that he would like the artwork to discuss how the system was never designed to protect him. This piece honors the parts of ourselves that we see as broken. There is a Japanese tech-nique called Kintsugi. It treats the “breaks” of a piece as something to be admired rather than obscured. Painted layers of resin depict Black New Orleanians full of joy communing together over a meal. The piece is broken speaking to our joy being broken through state sponsored violence. Like any trauma response, pieces of our joy are obscured and can be lost indefinitely, but like the legacy of Blackness in America, real beauty is the result.
Breanna Thompson (b. circa 1992, Pass Christian, MS; based in New Orleans, LA) is a multidisciplinary installation artist and sculptor whose practice incorporates painting, moving images, design and carpentry. Her work examines the metaphysical and explores the relationship between place and form. Thompson’s art has been fea-tured in public spaces such as the Lafitte Greenway as well as in film festivals and galleries including Studio Be and JAM Nola. In 2019 she art directed the short film Pillars, which premiered at Sundance and was an American Film Institute Grand Jury Prize Winner. Thompson attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and earned a BA at Xavier University of Louisiana.
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