Diedrick Brackens
Photo: courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Diedrick Brackens
United States born 1989
Level 2
NGV International
View on map
PROJECT
Diedrick Brackens’s works, which draw on European and West African textile traditions and are made from hand-dyed cotton, use weaving as a way of storytelling.
marrow becomes breath is typical of Brackens figurative work, which uses his own body as a reference. Evoking themes of regeneration and transformation in the title, the silhouetted subject kneels holding a chain-like string beside two skulls (one human, one animal) that symbolise the marrow of winter or death.
ABOUT
Born in Mexia, Texas in 1989, Diedrick Brackens is best known for his large-scale woven tapestries exploring the complexities of African-American and queer identity in the United States. Brackens’s recent solo exhibitions include his first European show at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, as well as exhibitions at the Mint Museum, Charlotte; Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; and the New Museum, New York. He is the recipient of the US Artist Fellowship 2021, the Louis Tiffany Comfort Grant 2019, the Marciano Artadia Award 2019, and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize 2018.
Purchased with funds donated by Tapestry Foundation of
Australia, 2023