Transfiguration of a Black Girl’s Magic

ABout the Artist

West Texas-based installation artist, Danielle Demetria East has been honing her skills as a found-object sculptor and mixed-media assemblage artist for the past few years. Originally from La Grange, Texas, East was born in 1997 and lived the majority of her life around her family (in particularly her grandmother) and in the rural areas of Fayette County, Texas. Recently, East was a graduate of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor with a degree in Studio Arts where she studied abroad in Prague, Czech Republic and received the Austin-Burks Award for Most Outstanding Art Major. Currently, she is an artist-in-residence at the Charles Adams Studio Project where she is exploring Afrofuturism, Black Girl Magic, and African-American Vernacular English. As short term goals, East plans to continue her education and get her masters from a university in Texas, continue creating art, and curate opportunities for marginalized artists of color.

“The common thread running through my work is the similarities between the Black woman and that of practitioners of magic. In my installations and performance work, I experiment with the values and beliefs systems, along with the levels of persecution of the Black female community and that of witches, rootworkers, and shaman. I am influenced by the works of Betye Saar, Wangechi Mutu, and Renee Stout. The catalyst for my work is the Black Girl Magic movement, Beyonce’s  visual album Lemonade, Louisiana practitioner Marie Laveau and Tituba, an enslaved black woman of Salem first accused of witchcraft.
Across societies, the witch is seen as  a metaphor of femalehood. As with witches, Black women are also caricatured as being ugly, hypersexual, and as superpredators. Despite the pain and persecution, these two emblems of feminine power actually parallel meanings of being a matriarch, a healer, and a representative of a higher being. Because of this discrimination, in my work, I want to embody this pain along with the process of healing and growth as a woman. By doing this, I am highlighting the Black woman and the practitioners core values such as, sacrifice, healing, and seduction.
In my installations, I intersect motifs of occult culture and important aesthetics of the Black female experience. The found objects in my pieces are primarily sourced from my homestead. I choose to use these items because they are reminiscent of my childhood as a Black girl and of culturally classed materials such as synthetic hair, black hair care tools, and my grandmothers possessions.
My performance work are pieces that connect the audience to the artist. Through this medium I want to enhibite a vulnerability between the audience while also carrying on the traditions and beliefs of my grandmothers. It is as if the the audience will be a client or guest entering into my coven.”