Sheena Rose is represented in the Digital exhibition (April 24-July 4, 2016). Here is a short feature on her work.
Bio
Sheena Rose was born in 1985 in Barbados. She is currently completing her MFA at the University on Northern Carolina at Greensboro, where she is the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, and holds a BFA from the Barbados Community College. Rose has exhibited widely, including at Alice Yard in Trinidad; Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut; the Queens Museum, New York; the Havana Biennial; the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC, Greatmore Art Studios, Cape Town; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico; the 2014 Jamaica Biennial at the National Gallery of Jamaica, the Aruba Biennial; and the Panama Biennial del Sur. Her work has been featured on the book covers of See Me Here, which was published by Robert & Christopher Publishers in Trinidad, and the novel The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson. She is the founder of an art group called Projects and Space, which organized public art projects.
About the Work
“My art practice questions and shares my personal experiences of being a black Caribbean woman from Barbados. I examine everyday situations, pop culture, stereotypes, history, and urban spaces in my work. I work in many different media such as drawing, animation, paintings, performance, video and photography.”
“My artwork is influenced by my studies in the United States, and travels to South Africa, Suriname, North America, Belgium, and the Caribbean. I incorporate urban street life and overheard conversations into my art work. In my animated drawings, I fuse various places I’ve visited and show my experiences and interpretation of these countries.”
“One of the primary questions in my work is what is the pop culture of Barbados? My answer is a body of work called Sweet Gossip which includes paintings, live performances and photography, and was shown on social networking sites where gossip is typically shared.Social media is a powerful space for the dissemination of my work and transformation of my work through dialogue with the public. I was interested in the idea of private experiences shared publicly and so I created fifteen-second videos of soap operas on Instagram. The soap opera characters addressed various issues facing women, such as women’s positions in the society, expectations in relationships between men and women, and the life of an overthinking artist.”
