Chelle Barbour
Artist Statement
I work through the lens of Afro-Futurism and Surrealism. The later was an art-cultural movement that began in the early 1920s. It was re-contextualized in the 1970s by the late author, Amiri Baraka, who coined the term Afro-Surrealism. Baraka argued that the Black experience in America was so unfathomably hard that our oppression and survival was surreal and beyond one’s imagination. Employing Baraka's notion of Afro-Surrealism has enabled me to explore the imagery and negative stereotypes that society has imposed on black women. And through surrealism, I can reimagine and reconstruct new narratives that disrupt the norm while simultaneously allowing the reconfigurations of beauty to envelop the viewer.
The progression of my work begins with fieldwork—people watching and taking photos of objects that have a metaphorical meaning. My secondary research is more tactile and materials based, and includes the study of textiles, wood; variations of paper (both the texture and weight), photographs, books, and aa host of materials that can be used to formulate a solid narrative.
Every blank piece of paper or canvas involves a gestalt of creativity--Juxtaposing and integrating disparate images that fit evenly or symbolically together. I rely solely on my imagination to guide me towards creating beautiful hybrids of Afro-Diasporan figures that are grounded in dadaism, constructivism, or minimalism that personify beguiling interlocutors that disrupt worn-out societal notions of black women. My work succeeds as visual metaphors speak to our strength, vulnerability, resistance, and power.
About Chelle Barbour
A California native, Chelle Barbour began her early foray into the arts as an actress in community college theatre. Working with the director, Dr. MaryEllen Kazmark, Barbour landed lead roles in Summer and Smoke, Show Boat, The Sound of Music, and later For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Barbour moved to Los Angeles and pursued her studies at UCLA in art history and theatre. She continued her education in graphic design, and ultimately completed her education in Art History and Fine Art at University of Southern California.
Barbour’s interdisciplinary artist practice is best recognized for her diverse Afro-Futurist and Afro-Surrealist collages. Her mixed media work explores the notion of beauty and the Black female as a cipher (one who holds the codes), and as an interlocutor in a society that fails to appreciate or value the black body. Influenced by Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, Barbour’s characters cast a broad net in their interpretation. From vibrant chameleons, goddesses, and agent provocateurs to commanding warriors and impassive spies, Barbour’s compelling collage portraiture conveys allegory, conviction, fantasy, femininity, and all that is inherently complex in the black global imaginary.
Barbour has participated in many group exhibitions and collaborations like the Black Lives Matter public art project at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (2016); Simone Leigh’s International Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter project at the Project Row Houses in Houston, TX (2017), You IS Pretty! Surrealism and The Black Imaginary, a solo show at Band of Vices Gallery in Los Angeles (2018), and was one of three American artists selected to participate in the European exhibition, The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain (2019) presented at The Wende Museum in Culver City, CA, and Black American Portraits (2020), at the Los Angeles County Art Museum.
Barbour’s art practice also involves curating and writing. She has worked with a nexus of local and international artists that began while conducting field research in Cuba for her graduate thesis, “Performance and Memory by Selected Cuban Artists: Ana Mendieta and Tania Bruguera,” which examined Cuban history and contemporary art through the lens of Alison Landsberg’s critical study of prosthetic memory and mass culture. Barbour’s curatorial practice involves both independent and institutional exhibitions, such as A Book as a Work of Art for All, Madame B, Colored Girls: Works of Art by Women of the African, Asian and Latin Diaspora presented in Los Angeles, and traveling shows like Posing Beauty, The Kinsey African American Art, and History Collection.
*Barbour’s artworks are in the permanent collection of the California African American Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum photo archive, The Wende Museum, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, the Bank of America Collection, the Richard Seavest Collection, and in notable private collections. Barbour was recently awarded the 2021 Established Art Fellow by the California Arts Council.