Nakeya Brown
If Nostalgia Were Colored Brown
about
Nakeya Brown was born in Santa Maria, California in 1988. A 2017 Snider Prize award winner, Brown has generated a vast body of work that uses photography to explore the complexities of race, beauty politics, and gender. She received her Bachelor of Art from Rutgers University and her Master of Fine Arts from The George Washington University. Her work has been featured nationally in recent solo exhibitions at the Catherine Eldman Gallery (Chicago, IL, 2017), the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art (Grand Rapids, MI, 2017), the Hamiltonian Gallery (Washington, DC, 2017) and The McKenna Museum of African American Art (New Orleans, LA, 2012); and in group exhibitions at the Eubie Blake Culture Center (Baltimore, MD, 2018) the Prince George’s African American Museum & Cultural Center (North Brentwood, MD, 2017), and the Woman Made Gallery (Chicago, IL 2016 & 2013), among several others . She has presented her work internationally at the Museum der bildenden Künste (Leipzig, Germany, 2018) and NOW Gallery (London, U.K., 2017). Brown’s work has been featured in New York magazine, Dazed & Confused, The Fader, TIME, and Vice. Her work has been included in photography books Babe and Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze. She lives and works in Maryland with her 5-year-old daughter, Mia.
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Nakeya Brown’s practice centers itself on black female subjectivity, black beauty, and often uses the arrangements and gathering of objects to preserve the cultural materials and practices of black womanhood. In this series entitled “If Nostalgia Were Colored Brown”, iconic imagery of Diana Ross, Minnie Riperton, Stephanie Mills, Deniece Williams, Natalie Cole, LaBelle, and Melba Moore display the commercial potency of of black women's bodies in popular culture. Nakeya stages objects associated with home life and beautification processes to create black feminine spaces of self care. Each vignette is its own unique site where intimacy, womanhood, culture, and blackness converge in order to cultivate a sense of nostalgia.
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#blackbeautypolitics #blackgirlmagic #selfcare #womeninphoto #stilllife