Sequoia Barnes
United States of America
Sequoia is a textile artist and sculptor who specialises in ceramics, pottery, quilting, soft sculpture, stitching, embroidery, installation, and assemblage. Her work often mixes these different genres via the influence of Black American Southern assemblage. Her work also uses Black radical art practices in the form of reappropriation through African-American folklore and Afro-surrealism, in order to deconstruct racist tropes and white supremacist representations of Blackness. Sequoia’s work is also heavily informed by post-structuralist semiotics, specifically but not limited to Derridean semiotic theory and the deconstruction of the “other”. Her work centres the importance of making processes and rituals, foregrounding the creation of “art” as equally important as the resulting object. Her process typically starts with a theoretical statement or exploration. She then articulates and disseminates her theoretical understandings through her practice, regardless of the skill set(s) she is using.
