We are excited to announce a lecture and conversation with Diedrick Brackens who is rejoining our CCA Community as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with CCA President David C. Howse.

Diedrick Brackens (b. 1989, Mexia, TX) is best known for woven tapestries that explore allegory and narrative through the artist’s autobiography, broader themes of African American and queer identity, as well as American history. Brackens employs techniques from West African weaving, quilting from the American South and European tapestry-making to create both abstract and figurative works. Often depicting moments of tenderness, Brackens culls from African and African American literature, poetry and folklore as source. Beginning his process through the hand-dying of cotton, a material deliberately employed in acknowledgement of its brutal history, Brackens’ oeuvre presents rich, nuanced visions of African American life and identity, while also alluding to the complicated histories of labor and migration. Brackens intricately-woven tapestries investigate historical gaps, interlacing the present with a singular magical realist worldview.

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Speaker Bio:

Diedrick Brackens is an LA-based textile artist, originally from Mexia, Texas. Brackens received his Masters of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Studio Museum Harlem, NY among others. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize in 2018, the Marciano Artadia Award in 2019, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2019 and the American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award in 2019.