Sade Alexis

Thank You, Ms. Rosemary, Summer 2022, Mural at 830 Denman St.

I was hired by Vancouver Mural Fest to curate and paint a mural that honours the work of Rosemary Brown. I was not allowed to create a mural in Rosemary’s image because the building owners did not want the mural to appear “too political”. I chose instead to use this opportunity to highlight and uplift Black women’s joy. I wanted Black women to take up space in the West end, an extremely white, wealthy area. This mural was created with the help of my friends and family, its a piece that was created by, for and with my community.

Sketchbook musings, Spring 2022, Ink and coloured pencil on paper, 9”x 12”

This small collection of work done in my sketchbook was an attempt to move outside of my normal modes of making to be more loose, relaxed and to put less pressure on my making practice. I wanted to draw from the things I am inspired by, the music I listen to, the photographers I follow on social media, the movies I watch etc. Perhaps this is more an homage to the pop culture I consume.

I am my ancestors wildest dreams, February 2022, Ink on paper, 9” x 12”

I was hired by The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria to take part in their Family Sunday program where artists come in and teach families about their practice or about art making in some way. I took this opportunity to teach about self portraits as an act of self love, and self acceptance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bqsMJDUDWY&t=919s

Joe and Oliver, January 2022, Ink and watercolour on paper, 15”x20”

I had the opportunity to draw my uncle Joe, and was asked to represent his relationship with his grandson. I wanted the love and kinship they have for one another to be clear in this piece. It was an honour to be able to draw someone I respect and love so much, as one of the elders of my family.

Black Talk 2, February 2022, Vinyl stickers

These stickers were made in February 2022 for Black history month.

Black boys look blue, November 2021, Ink on paper, 13 x 20”

I have always loved and admired the movie Moonlight. This movie is everything to me, the characters, the dialogue, the colours, the lighting, the soundtrack, every aspect of the movie is Black. This movie represents Black Queerness in a way that has never been shown to me. I am so glad this movie exists. I made this piece as a remake of the moonlight movie poster, as an act of admiration for the characters and to remind myself why I love this soft, heartbreaking coming of age story about a young Black boy.

Jimi October 2021, Ink on paper, 9”x12”

I made this piece after a brief art making Hiatus, and it was the first piece I had made, solely because I wanted to. I made this piece for my best friend Lucinda she has always loved Jimi Hendrix, and I wanted to highlight the fact that Jimi frequented Vancouver because his grandmother Nora Hendrix lived in what was once Hogan’s Alley. I wanted this piece to capture Jimi’s spirit, his vibrancy and his ingenuity.

The Future is Black, September 2021, Ink on paper, 17”x10”

I created this piece for Moniker Press’ annual calendar made up of the work of 12 different local artists. The prompt for this year was “The future” . I created this piece with the intention of exploring the long withstanding literary and artistic genre of Afrofuturism. I was also thinking about the concept that there always has been and always will be Black people. Blackness is timeless.

Labour of Love, 10” Diameter, May 2021, Embroidery on canvas,

I have been a lover of embroidery from a very young age, and up until recently I reserved that practice for personalized gifts and the occasional piece to adorn my own clothing. I recently began thinking about the political and historical implications of embroidery and handicrafts. The ties to my ancestors and the many hand embroiderers who came before me (most importantly during slavery) are what led me to create this piece, my first non-wearable piece of embroidery.

This piece was an exploration of what is possible when you merge Black portraiture, physical labour and embroidery.

This piece took months of work, thousands of stitches and hundreds of hours sitting hunched over this piece. I made this piece for the many Black women who came before me, whose only creative outlet was quilting, embroidery and handicrafts. Along with this, I am honouring my paternal grandfather who was a long practice tailor.

This piece was shown alongside Joy at “Love Letter” held as Slice of Life Gallery and Gift.

Charlene, June 2021, Ink and watercolour on paper, 22”x30”

I created this piece as part of the “What is your story?” campaign in partnership with KPMG Canada. The purpose of the project was to connect local artists, with KPMG staff to share both our story, and theirs. To see the video this piece was based on follow this link: https://home.kpmg/ca/en/home/insights/2021/04/what-is-your-story.html

In creating this piece, I wanted to honour the ways in which Charlene chose to adorn herself on the day of her interview. To pay close attention to the jewelry, the patterns in her clothing, the colours she wore, her hairstyle, her makeup etc. I did this because I know that the ways in which Black folks dress ourselves is intentional. When we get dressed, especially as Black people, we are aware of the fact that people judge us on how we look. We take this opportunity to tell the outside world what we want them to know.

I also wanted to honour Charlene’s homelands through the Orchids I depicted, as they are the unofficial national plant of Kenya.

Safe Home Sarah, 2020, 22”x30”, Watercolour on paper

This portrait is part of the larger installation of the same name, that intends to pay homage to Sarah Baartman. This image was created to honour Sarah, as well as to build a relationship with her through a process of researching, sketching, writing letters and creating the final image. Sarah was of the Khoikhoi people, which reside in what is now known as the cape of South Africa. Her people were cattle herding people, and I have adorned her in traditional ceremonial clothing and surrounded her with flora and fauna of her homelands as a means of protecting her, and guiding her home.

Toni, Nina, Audre, 2020, 12”x14”, Watercolour and ink on paper

This series was created to accompany the work “Safe Home Sarah”. These three portraits were created to sit alongside the portrait of Sarah Baartman as a means of protecting and caring for her. These three portraits of Toni Morrison, Nina Simone, and audre lorde were made because I believe that all Black Folks before me are my ancestors. These portraits serve a dual purpose, the first is to protect Sarah Baartman, and the second, as an opportunity for me to connect with, or speak to this group of my ancestors.

JOY, 2021, 18”x24”, Ink on paper

While creating this piece I was thinking about what it has been like to live s a Black person this past year. I thought about the fact that for a lot of us, our joy is felt in numbers, when we are together we are loud, boisterous and joyful. This piece speaks to the unencumbered joy that we feel when we finally can come together once more.

In February of 2021, I had the opportunity of displaying Safe Home Sarah at the Cheeky Proletariat in partnership with Black Arts Vancouver. The exhibition lasted for the month of February in honour of Black History/Futures month.

Safe Home Sarah was created as a means of sending Sarah Baartman home to her ancestral lands in the cape of Africa. Her portrait is surrounded by Ancestral Protectors in the form of portraits of audre lorde, Toni Morrison and Nina Simone. Along with this, the portraits are accompanied by an altar filled with books written by Black Woman authors, dried flowers, and African cloths.

The Cheeky Proletariat was the perfect space for this work to be displayed as it allowed for anyone to view it. There are little to no barriers for people living in the area to view the work in passing, to stop and spend time with the work and learn more about Sarah’s story.

This social media banner was commissioned by Vancouver Pride Society to advertise for their QTBIPOC talent show. I decided to work digitally for this project, as the piece would ultimately exist only digitally. I chose this fruit motif because I loved that the character’s afro puffs mimicked the shape of the oranges.

Rosemary, 2021, 14”x16”, Ink and Watercolour on paper

Rosemary was created to honour Rosemary Brown, a Black revolutionary who lived and worked in so called Vancouver. Rosemary is shown adorned with flowers from her homeland of Jamaica.

This Project was created in partnership with Kali Works, they contacted me to collaborate on an image that was to be printed on Tshirts. Alex and Lindy (co-founders) discussed that they wanted me to create a character that acted as a story teller for folks of the Black Diaspora. I then designed this unnamed character, which they printed on beautiful t-shirts.

Disco Chic, 2021, 9”x12”, Ink on paper

Created to reflect on the vibrance and joy of Black folks in the 70s, and to celebrate disco culture, which celebrated style, sexuality, joy and movement in the face of the tension and political unrest of the 60s/70s.

Fat Femmes 2 the front, 2021, 12”x14”, Ink on paper

A celebration of the beauty of fat black femmes

For this piece I was asked to read a chapter of the book "Wild Meat and The Bully Burgers" and write my own narrative to respond to the chapter, and to then illustrate the two narratives. I chose to focus on the descriptions of 1980s Hawaii's flora and fauna as given by the main characters father. I wrote a narrative that related to this by referring to the stories my dad had told me of growing up in Trinidad. I wanted to show the similarities of people living in Island countries, and the ways in which we speak about our homelands. The quote “Daddy telling me things he might never say again” was what inspired this piece.

Black Speaks, Stickers, 2020

This sticker series was created to be sold and shared widely. I wanted the stickers to speak for themselves.

Black Talk is a collection of stickers that I made to channel some of my anger surrounding the Black uprisings in the summer of 2020. I made these stickers and sold them to raise money for Black therapy fund Vancouver

How much of me? 2020, 14”x16” Ink and watercolour on paper

This piece is a depiction of my paternal grandparents.

In response to Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” I created this piece. In the book Bui asks “how much of me is me? And how much of me is predetermined” when thinking of her ancestors. This brought me to ask the same question, in reference to my paternal grandparents, how much of me is them? How much of me is made up of these two people I have never and will never meet. My grandparents are with me, because I am them.

In October of 2020, I chose to create my own parameters for a drawing a day, building off of the concept of Inktober. I chose not to participate in the traditional inktober due to the recent controversy surrounding the theft of artistic content from Black artists.

For the month of October I set out to illustrate a different Black hairstyle once a day. I did not succeed in creating an image for every single day of October, but I did create quite a few. For each illustration I wanted to focus on the ingenuity, beauty and creativity of Black hairstyles.

This series was created to be displayed on streets, plastered onto walls with wheat-paste in multiples. The series forces people to look at the images I have made. Each face is confrontational, proclaiming that “Black Fathers Exist”, “Black Joy is Important”, “Black Moms Are Heroes”, “Black Women are Powerful”, and that “Black Love is Beautiful.”

The series was shown in the exhibition BLACK.

BLACK was an exhibition held in February 2020 at the Porch Gallery at Emily Carr University. As curator of the exhibition I felt a need to amplify the voices of the Black students at Emily Carr. The Artists included are Michael Oyaro, Becky Bair, Ruth Katinisa, and Sade Alexis.

Exhibition Text:

“Blackness exists in community. Our identities are our own, but they are inextricably linked to one another and this show exists to present that. This show does not exist to educate, it exists to celebrate our collective identity. Blackness unites us as artists, as resistors and as people. It fuels our love, our compassion and our creation. Each of us depicts Blackness through different mediums and in different ways , but the message remains the same: we are beautiful, complex, and important. Our Blackness does not define us, it allows us for a deep connection to a history of resilience and resistance.” - Sade Alexis

Double Conscious, 2020, 20”x20”, Ink on Black paper

Double Conscious was created as a response to W.E.B Dubois discussing the concept of the Black Double Conscious

This piece was created as a commission for a client. The client wanted an image of their young niece, and they gave me a collection of images to work from. Her niece radiated joy, and I wanted that to come through in this piece. Pure joy.

Brother Moses and Sister Mary M, 2019, 15”x22”, Ink on paper

Here I have depicted the biblical figures Moses and Mary Magdalene as Black characters complete with Black hairstyles and jewelry. I wanted to pay homage to the devout Black Christians that I know, I wanted them to be represented in their images of worship.