Phoenix S Brown
Remixing portraiture and preconceived notions of the Black fxmale body is at the core of my practice. By painting representations of nature and the fxmale form with contemporary material and aesthetic choices, I subvert the one-way window of fantasy that western painting has long offered.
There exists a feedback loop between my analog painting and digital editing that is visible in the final image. My interdisciplinary paintings are layered with impossible brush strokes from their time in photo editing software and maintain a textured surface that speaks to the western art canon. In colonialism, nature and Black wxmen have existed as reserves to exploit; in my work, they commingle and force us to confront our viewing access to them. The work aims to grapple with the audience’s viewing psychology in the act of projecting their views onto how Black wxmanhood should exist in reality and in the flat image.