Atisha Fordyce

Mason Gross School of The Arts

Bantu, 2017
acrylic, colored pencil, and ballpoint pen on paper, 45 x 36 inches

Tell us about the work that you have submitted.
Bantu is part of a series where I create hybrids, versions of family members, or people I am close with who inhabit the architectural spaces of my memories and dreams. The drawing depicts a moment in a space where beings float, existing between the places I've seen and my desire for belonging in them.

How would you describe your studio practice?
My studio practice is interdisciplinary, involving representations of the body and its relationship to home and the familiar. In the process of re-representing people and places, the image can get abstracted in ways that anyone can lay anything – baggage, perceptions, ideas – onto it. But what do we do without trying to hold onto false senses of representation? My practice is constantly contending with that question, among many others.

What about figurative work do you find particularly interesting?
I find that figures are one of the most relatable subjects in art because they reference life and offer personage. They are relatable because we can attribute emotions and senses to them. I particularly find it interesting that I can alter the figure to create hybrids that exist in endless alternate planes; as a proposal for new ways of thinking, feeling, and being.

Website: www.atishafordyce.com
Instagram: @thedraftswoman