Maker Monday: Sharon Walters - Seeing Ourselves

For this weeks Maker Monday, a little throwback to an exhibition i saw at MAC Birmingham last year...

'Seeing Ourselves' by Sharon Walters celebrates the power and grace of Black women through a series of collages and hand-crafted pieces. 

Exploring feminine themes alongside identity and race, the pieces on display range from portraiture to silhouettes that are interspersed with nature. 

Layers of photographs of friends, magazine imagery, donated imagery are layers to give depth to the pieces; to highlight the layers beneath the surface. 

The works are built by 'cutting, gluing, manipulating and intersecting multiple pictures into dimensional portraits'. 

I felt the pieces, although colourful, highlighted the idea of being invisible...or not 'seen'...or the subject having hidden depths or meanings. Walters highlights this invisibility and under-representation of Black women in her work and uses art as a 'form of meditation and self-care'. 

I particularly loved the cut out pieces as the lights created strong shadows across the works to make them seem deeper than they are. 

To find out more about Sharon Walters, take a look at her website here: Home - Collage Prints Celebrating Black Women | Sharon Walters (londonartist1.com)