Diedrick Brackens

Born in Mexia, Texas, Diedrick Brackens lives and works in Los Angeles. Brackens employs techniques from West African weaving, quilting from the American South and European tapestry-making, often depicting moments of male tenderness and culling from African and African American literature, poetry and folklore as source. Beginning his process through the hand-dyeing of cotton, a material he deliberately uses in acknowledgement of its brutal history, Brackens’ oeuvre presents rich, nuanced visions of African American life and identity, while also alluding to the complicated histories of labor and migration. He received his BFA from the University of North Texas, Denton, in 2011 and his MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, in 2014. He has exhibited widely, including at New York's New Museum in 2019 and at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, in 2020. He was the 2019-20 Longenecker-Roth artist in residence at the University of California San Diego in their Department of Visual Arts.