×

© Krystle Lemonias

« Back to Winners

Krystle Lemonias

Phillipsburg, New Jersey

Artist Statement

My intradisciplinary practice addresses and intimates the intricacies within Black and people of color immigrant communities that perform most of today’s domestic work. My work is grounded in principles of painting, sculpture, and drawing featuring diverse representations of Black immigrant women who are my central subjects.

I tell stories of women’s labor, often unseen and untold that play an integral role in the function of our society. Essential participants in America’s domestic workforce. My practice establishes formal and intuitive processes that use interdisciplinary techniques to stitch together intersecting themes with personal narratives. I explore my family and my socialization to do care work in relation to the social complexity regarding class, gender, citizenship, commodification, economic inequity, and labor rights.

The reappropriation and manipulation of materials used destabilize its power and play with the contradiction of mammy stereotypes. My materials include used baby clothes that belonged to the children my mother cared for, my clothes, my sister's, and my mother's. Repurposing these baby clothes is a representational resistance to the power structure that is inherent to care work. This inclusion in my practice guides me along with conversations with my mother and other women who are working in such employment.

© Krystle Lemonias

Krystle Lemonias's Portfolio

© Krystle Lemonias

Artist Biography

Krystle Lemonias (Jamaican, b. 1989) is an interdisciplinary visual artist, labor activist, and art educator. She had a solo exhibition, Yu cyaan ketch Quaku, yu ketch im shut with Andrew Rafacz Gallery, and has been exhibited at Blum and Poe in the Show Me the Signs exhibition for #sayhername campaign. Her work has been shown in the Hindsight 2020: A Year Later at the Polk Museum of Art and in the Make America What America Must Become exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans. Lemonias creates work with numerous skill sets. She is primarily influenced by her research on social class privilege, citizenship, labor rights, and how economic inequality affects Black communities.

Found materials, fabric, and iconography are used to communicate these themes. She sees her work as a tool to encourage this population's education of Black immigrant cultural identity and its connection to the broader diaspora. She acquired a BFA in printmaking from New Jersey City University in 2018 and an MFA in 2022 from the University of South Florida.

krystlelemonias.com

@empress1989kl

© Krystle Lemonias

Stay Connected

Follow Us on Instagram
@hopperprize

Join Our Network