Brittany Adeline King

Dokafleh is a new conjuring of dolls by New York City based artist Brittany Adeline King. Coining its name from the Liberian colloquial phrase for a reworn garment, the exhibition explores the fashions of reinterpretation. Carefully constructed with archival images, lappas, found objects and video; Dokafleh considers the responsibility to keep record through rendered silhouettes punctuated by pattern and histrionics. The figures are held together through hand sewn joins, suggesting a weight shaped by accumulation, reconciliation, and repair.

Stitched seams, pinned elements, and exposed painterly abstractions register processes of relation, consideration and restraint; while fragments of archival calculations embedded within the material introduce partial narratives that resist full legibility and ownership. These traces function less as statements than as residues of placement and displacement absorbed over time.

King’s relationship to place and memory informs the work throughout the exhibition. Recalling a day at the market, the artist writes:

“I’m standing at a central intersection of Waterside Market. Sweat is dripping from my arms and scalp. Salespeople are brushing against me. Everyone is in a flurry. Megaphones with dismembered surfaces are beaming “Orange money! Orange data!” Prices are being projected left and right. Sis grabs me and asks “You want your hair down?” I’m finding my way back to Benson St. Kehkeh’s area within centimeters of me and I worm around them while dodging puddles adorned with days old water sacks and discarded ephemera. The air is thick and dusty with smoke. A used polka dot scarf flashes through the noise. I ask auntie how much in LD. I find myself floating in and out of the sun, of the noise. Acquiring small pieces of forgotten items, in an effort to define the frenzy of my love for home.”

Through snippets captured during the artist's time home in Liberia, a video installation extends the doll’s inquiries into lived experience, place, and duration. The footage operates as a generous fragment, situating the Dolls within broader geographies and temporalities. Together, the dolls and video installation hover between vulnerability and resilience. Essence is presented as provisional and ongoing, shaped by material labor and lived encounter. What emerges is not a fixed identity, but a form in process, one that acknowledges the intersections of being and the continual work of becoming.