I Can Show You Better Than I Can Tell You will showcase the body of work Desirae Brown has created throughout her time at ASLD since September 2024. Exploring the value and beauty of her experience in single Black motherhood.
Exhibition Dates: April 25-May31, 2025
Opening Reception: April 25, 2025 | 5:00-8:30PM
When entering an unfamiliar space, we read the room. We take that information, gathered through our intuition, and act accordingly. I “read a room” as a woman of color and a single mother who has experience with living on low income, but how I read the room is also influenced by how the others in the room are reading me. In fact, many signs in our culture associated with lower income mothers of color are overdetermined unto symbols with negative connotations. A single mother becomes a cliché, a woman of color who is a single mother a variation only, a type and not a person. In response to such negative and dehumanizing readings, I use materials that have come to symbolize lesser value or diminished beauty and transform them into a marker for something more personal and positive. I turn these signs back into something to be valued, by both the bearer and the perceiver, unveiling the beauty of single Black motherhood and revealing our strength, adaptiveness, and resilience.
This exhibit is a part of the Visiting Artist of Color Residency. Click here to learn more about this residency.
