Artists on Artists: Diedrick Brackens on With Pleasure HD

Diedrick Brackens combines weaving techniques from West Africa, strip-woven kente cloth from Ghana, European textiles, and quilts of the American South to create his intricate works. Using dreamlike imagery, he creates a symbolic landscape where the allegorical catfish occupies the realm of the spirits and swims in parallel to the Black body. Linking various images from the internet, social media, family photographs, and other sources, seams and hanging threads are physical signifiers of the analog hand-weaving process, the passage of time, and the artist’s labor and craftsmanship.