Diedrick Brackens
'The Shape of Survival'
Feb. 24 - July 7
Diedrick Brackens creates woven tapestries that blend a cosmic array of allegories, historical narratives, and autobiographical memories into compelling forms. In The Shape of Survival, Brackens brings his work into intimate dialogue with the American South, drawing on the region’s history of quilting and influences from myriad historic artists, most notably Aaron Douglas. Brackens’ use of hand-dyed cotton acknowledges the weighty legacy of this material, honoring its past while transmuting it into lyrical, awe-inspiring artworks.
The Shape of Survival takes on additional resonance in the museum’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies within a structure that originally served as a Central of Georgia Railway depot where cotton and other commodities produced by enslaved Black labor were transported and stored. Yet the poetic and often ecstatic gestures of Brackens’ figures offer a sense of joy and revelry, expressing a powerful engagement with the richness of both African American cultural inheritance and queer identity. Together, these works propose conversations across the centuries on the power of art and its potential for transformation and growth.
Diedrick Brackens creates woven tapestries that blend a cosmic array of allegories, historical narratives, and autobiographical memories into compelling forms. In The Shape of Survival, Brackens brings his work into intimate dialogue with the American South, drawing on the region’s history of quilting and influences from myriad historic artists, most notably Aaron Douglas. Brackens’ use of hand-dyed cotton acknowledges the weighty legacy of this material, honoring its past while transmuting it into lyrical, awe-inspiring artworks.
The Shape of Survival takes on additional resonance in the museum’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies within a structure that originally served as a Central of Georgia Railway depot where cotton and other commodities produced by enslaved Black labor were transported and stored. Yet the poetic and often ecstatic gestures of Brackens’ figures offer a sense of joy and revelry, expressing a powerful engagement with the richness of both African American cultural inheritance and queer identity. Together, these works propose conversations across the centuries on the power of art and its potential for transformation and growth.
Diedrick Brackens, "through the summer triangle," 2021, woven cotton and acrylic yarn, 83 x 81 in. Courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles / Dallas / Seoul.
About the artist
Diedrick Brackens (b. 1989, Mexia, Texas) is a Los Angeles-based textile artist. Brackens received his M.F.A. from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. His work is held in the permanent collections of various institutions, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. Brackens is the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award, and a United States Artists Fellowship.
Credits
The Shape of Survival is organized by SCAD Museum of Art chief curator Daniel S. Palmer and presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2025.
