About this Event
About the Artist
Jioni Warner most known work is a trilogy of portraits that gained the judges choice award at the 2021 'Ones to Watch' Exhibition. The portraits discuss the exploitation of black women in society and its links to historical events, they encourage conversations on the triple marginalisation of race, gender and class black women face daily. Jioni was born in Leeds and graduated from Staffordshire University in 2021 and has recently completed her MA in fine art at Liverpool John Moore’s University. By using a range of mediums such as portraiture, collage, and photography Warner discusses the black British experience and identity by looking at her position as a contemporary black British woman.
In Warner's portraits, she uses photo transferred images as a contextual background, gathering images from social media, archive's, articles, and internet sources. The viewer is left to reflect on the relationship between the profusion of images and the figure in the portrait. In her work, Warner uses herself as the subject and creates characters to evoke the theme of the painting to form the narrative and experience. The subject will often have a strong outward gaze to command authority and take up space, Warner is interested in replacing the gaze which has been traditionally white in art with a black woman opening a discussion on the representation and stereotypes placed on the black body.
Warner is going through a self-fuelled enquiry and examining her ancestry through embodying heritage in a performative way and through portraiture, in doing so showcasing the depth of history that goes into black British which questions the vague label placed on black people in Britain and the vocabulary used to describe us. The layering in her work also aids in referencing the multi-layers of experiences and culture that is being black British and Caribbean.
About the Workshop
This workshop discusses the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of black people through art history. When going through a gallery how many black people do you see portrayed through portraiture?
Portraiture was done to symbolise wealth and power and therefore was carried out by people of a higher status. Therefore, black people wouldn’t be represented during this time as they were enslaved or servants. When a black person was included in portraiture it was often to make the key figure look paler, this can be seen in Édouard Manet Olympia 1863 and Jean- Baptiste Santerre Catherine-Marie Legendre 1717. So, how do black artist combat this? By creating the representation, they want to see and removing the white gaze off of the black body. This workshop will also discuss the British black arts movement 1982 which saw the rise of artist such as Sonia Boyce, Lubiana Himid and Keith Piper and many more. This movement has inspired the current generations of black British artist showcasing why positive representation is important. Within this workshop guest will get the chance to empower themselves by creating self-portraits that celebrate themselves and their cultures.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Gallery 455, 455 Smithdown Road, Liverpool, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00