The Holburne Museum presents the first exhibition in the UK by Diedrick Brackens.
Diedrick Brackens (b. 1989, Texas, US), whose large-scale, vibrant, hand-crafted tapestry works explore allegory and narrative through autobiography, African American and queer identity and American history, will go on display at The Holbourne museum in January 2025.
Brackens employs techniques from West African weaving, quilting from the American South and European tapestry-making to create both abstract and figurative works. Beginning his process through the hand-dying of cotton, a material he deliberately uses in acknowledgement of its brutal history, Brackens presents rich, nuanced visions of African American life and identity, while also alluding to the complicated histories of labour and migration. Brackens utilises both commercial dyes and atypical pigments such as wine, tea and bleach to create his vibrant, intricately-woven tapestries that investigate historical gaps, interlacing the present with his singular magical realist worldview. Often depicting moments of male tenderness, Brackens draws on African and African American literature, poetry and folklore as source.
Four key works by Brackens will be on display in the Holburne’s neoclassical Ballroom Gallery. The scenes depicted in each weaving exist out of time, suspended between a distant past and a world to come. The works in this series are set at dusk, twilight, and deep night—hours that become vehicles for ritual and interiority. The silhouetted inhabitants of this in-between realm are archetypes that Brackens once described as ciphers, or “needles through which I slip the threads of biography and myth, and pass through a mesh of history and context.” His figures are accompanied by an ecosystem of symbols and shapes that have recurred over the course of his practice.
Chris Stephens, Director of the Holburne Museum, said: “We are thrilled that the Holburne is hosting Diedrick Brackens’s first exhibition in the UK. Continuing our commitment to the display of craftwork of various media, Diedrick’s rich imagery also speaks so powerfully to our history and the stories behind many of the works in our collection as well as echoing, visually, our holdings of 18th century silhouettes.”
Listings
Diedrick Brackens: Woven Stories: 24 January – 26 May 2025
The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath, BA2 4DB
Open Daily: 10am to 5pm, Sunday and Bank Holiday 11am to 5pm
Further Information: The Holburne Museum