La Vaughn Belle
Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental-as in to bloom in collapsing horizons), 2024
Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental-as in to breathe the water awake), 2024
Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental-as in to gorge on the blood behind mountains), 2024
Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental-as in to whirl into a haunting), 2024
Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental-as sacrificial and bouyant), 2022
Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental-as to live at the at the edges of promise), 2024
Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental-when the land can no longer bear its fate), 2024
About
La Vaughn Belle makes visible the unremembered. Through exploring the material culture of coloniality Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Working in a variety of disciplines her practice includes: painting, installation, photography, writing, video and public interventions. Her work with colonial era pottery led to a commission with the renowned brand of porcelain products, the Royal Copenhagen. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (NY), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (CA) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK) with large solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (SC) and the National Nordic Museum (WA). Her art is in the collections of the National Photography Museum and the Vestsjælland Museum in Denmark and the National Gallery of Art and the Virgina Fine Art Museum in the U.S. She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. The project was featured in over 100 media outlets around the world including the NY Times, Politiken, VICE, the BBC and Le Monde. Her work has also been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Small Axeand numerous journals and books.