Jamie Harris

Visual language for we, the artists, is a tool used for more than the sharing of words. It is a tool used to evoke emotion, questions, and change; to create our own worlds. Jamie Harris uses it to explore histories, foreign and yet still familiar to her African American upbringing. Layers of memory and tradition littered with rites and ritual of a peoples whose history has been diluted through generations, migrations, and captivity. These stories, watered down through the slave trade are revived through literature, art, and culture. Visual chronicles of the African American Diaspora often center solely on the figure, the political experience, or Trans-Atlantic slave trade. What She finds interesting in these events is how identity is the focal point. But who are We? Are we simply defined by our experiences and the stories of our elders or critical race theory; what is this the measure of our blackness? Selfhood is curated by roles we partake in, the rewards of lived experiences, seeing the next generation persevere, but frequently with love, hurt, and discovery. The black experience is not a monolith, nor should its visual accounts be.

As Jamie Harris finds that our experiences are intersectional and universal, some nuanced with ritual passed on through survival and resilience, she pays homage to the traces left behind. During her practice, she hopes to encounter what every aspect of what her heritage consists of, to express it through a marrying of craft and fine art through the Western lens while celebrating the bridges to her linage. Jamie’s language exists in a world culminated in assemblage and installation made of paint, clay, water, and fire.