for me personally, 2025 has involved both my personal and professional lives undergoing significant changes, and throughout most of it, my spoons and energy for writing newsletters has been non-existent. in the midst of navigating new health issues and guiding all three kids through another year of homeschool that resulted in each one graduating, i also spent the last 8 months building a brand new body of work in the studio, preparing for another institutional exhibition, ending inequitable gallery partnerships, overhauling how i go about the business of being a working artist, and working on my first monograph. with everything releasing consecutively this fall, summer was an incredibly busy season in the studio, so i’m looking forward to finally being able to slow things back down now that each project is at or near completion. while winter and spring were seasons of multiple endings in various areas of my life, fall is shaping up to be a season of several firsts with the start of a new era for me professionally and even for my family with our first kid having just completed high school.
since my return from paris last july, i’ve spent the last 10-12 months questioning my ambitions, recalibrating long-held goals, and restructuring my professional life behind the scenes. as a result, i’ve reached the end of a cycle of growth that has challenged, transformed, and propelled me forward in ways i didn’t anticipate, but definitely needed as an artist, businessperson, and individual. as taxing as most of this process has been, moving through it slowly has enabled me to address longstanding problems that emerged, yet still hold onto all gratitude for what i experienced and learned throughout the last 4.5 years. i am not the same artist i was 5 years ago, let alone the woman who returned home from france last summer painfully aware of what was no longer working for or supporting me, what needed dissolution, and what aspects of my personal and professional lives were requiring different alignment. while fall 2024 found me submerged in waves and states of grief, sickness, questioning, and surrender, this one finds me relieved to have survived a fallow season that stripped me down to my barest bone and dissolved me of everything i thought i needed to hold onto to remain whole or bear in order simply to survive.
having now moved beyond the sharpest and more isolating growth edges of the past year, i’m feeling a sense of renewal that i haven’t experienced in a long time; much like the goddess inanna who descended into the underworld and emerged with a more fully integrated understanding of self and purpose, i find myself emerging into my own personal spring and harvest season, ready to release what’s grown from all i’ve composted during this latest sojourn into my own depths and beyond.
i’m both excited and cautiously optimistic about where i am now, but new beginnings for me can sometimes induce a bit of anxiety because of the uncertainty that accompanies them; the unknowns of what lies ahead can feel overwhelming to consider, but as uneasy as ambiguity makes me, i’m also feeling buoyed by the confidence and renewed sense of freedom that’s also settling in as i continue to move forward.
and with that, let’s dive into what’s been recent and new…
as seen on (streaming) TV + new exhibitions + career update
and just like that: years ago in my mid-30s when i finally forced myself to watch sex and the city in its entirety for the first time (no skips!), i never imagined i’d hear a character like charlotte york scream out my name in a nightclub. in fact, the only possibility i’ve ever even considered when it comes to being featured in television or film is having my art included in the set design, a silent part of the background. so imagine my shock when i watched episode 3 of the current (and now final) season of and just like that, and heard my name mentioned not once, not twice, but THREE different times throughout the episode. i nearly fell out of my bed! bert and i kept yelling, rewinding, looking at each other, pausing to yell some more and pointing at the tv. it’s been three months since the episode premiered, and i’m still in disbelief. definitely unexpected, absolutely wild, and so fun to experience. if you don’t watch the show or haven’t seen the episode, you can view clips of it over on my instagram.
endings: after a lot of deliberation, this year i made the decision to step back from formal gallery representation for the time being. as a result, i am no longer represented by galerie marguo and vsf; i formally ended my working relationship with marguo earlier this year, and then with vsf in july. i remain grateful to both galleries for the opportunities they offered, for expanding the reach of my work and taking it to an international audience, their investment in my career, their support of my practice, and for all that we accomplished together over the last 4.5 years; the knowledge and experience i’ve gained from working with both galleries throughout this time has made me not only a better artist, but also a more clear-eyed and sharper business person. while this isn’t a decision that i came to lightly, it was a step that became glaringly obvious that i needed to make if i truly wanted to align my professional life more closely with what’s in the best interest of my values, the longevity of my career, how i want to manage the business of being a working artist, maintaining a healthy relationship with my practice, and most importantly, my physical health and overall well-being.
will i still exhibit and consign work with galleries? yes, but how i do so is definitely changing, with my preference being to stick to consignment-based projects for the next year or two. restructuring my engagement with the commercial gallery model and forgoing representation for a time will afford me the opportunity and freedom to discern what i truly desire to experience and gain from a gallery partnership in the future should i choose to partner with one again, build more infrastructure on the business and operations side of my studio, and hopefully give me a much needed reprieve from the parts of the commercial side that i find too transactional, harmful, and depleting as a working artist. while some of my experiences over the last 5 years with galleries have been positive, when i look at the entirety of what i’ve experienced and witnessed, too much of it has left me depleted and disgusted. out of the 3 galleries i worked extensively with during the last 3 years, i had to hire a lawyer to help me try and resolve issues with 2; issues that have had outsized impacts on my finances, my ability to trust others, my career & practice, and even on my health, the toll of which became too significant for me to ignore or brush off as anomalies. i’ve grown tired of the lack of integrity and ethics that are rubber stamped and pervasive throughout the industry, of the lack of regulation, oversight, and accountability, and of how little rights and legal recourse artists have to address disputes and mistreatment. i’m done being on the receiving end of business practices that are shoddy at best and harmful at their worst, of having to hire lawyers to fight nonpayment and breached consignment terms, and most of all, i’m just no longer willing to accept or stomach the ills of the industry as “a necessary part of the game”, as i’ve been told to do by gallerists, collectors, and even some fellow artists alike.
now, there was a time over the last year that i believed i was experiencing burnout and questioned if i wanted to continue to have this type of art “career” at all, but what i came to understand is that i am not burnt out from making art nor sharing it with others. i am however, burnt out from the machinations of this ecosystem and the myriad of ways harm is enabled and normalized by those who definitely know better but lack the emotional intelligence to care, let alone the intestinal fortitude to change any of it. i’ve realized too, that while i place a high value on transparency in relationships and business, perception is what dominates both within the art world, often to the detriment of artists. anyone you talk to will tell you that the art world is driven by relationships, with many touting their relationship building as a badge of honor, but what many will only say in private conversations if at all, is that the relational dynamics at play throughout the industry are often quite toxic, purely extractive, and incredibly imbalanced. i’ve long stated that while artists are at the center of this ecosystem, we are rarely ever truly centered within in it and are not able to benefit from it in the same ways that other members are. my experiences these last few years have only reaffirmed this belief, which is why i knew that if i didn’t make some big changes, i’d end up with having more than a case of burnout to contend with, and i don’t want to put myself nor my family through that. so…i’m taking time to find a different way forward that’s far more generative and keeps me in the driver’s seat when it comes to my career, and i hope that as i do, i’ll be able to assist other artists in doing the same. there is quite a lot that i’ve learned in recent years that i am still thinking through how to share with other artists in a way that feels constructive and helpful. i’m sure i will start by divulging some of those experiences and their lessons here in this newsletter over time, but for now, my focus is on closing out this chapter and stepping into what’s next, which i’m eager to share about…
new beginnings: my first institutional show in the u.s. opened at the harvey b. gantt center for african-american art + culture in charlotte, nc on september 5th and runs through january 4th. titled a time for furious dancing, this exhibition features a collection of artworks from the last 4 years and includes two brand new artworks— a large-scale diptych and a mixed media painting with neon text. it was always my hope that the works from let’s dance our way back home (which were previously on view at consortium museum), would be able travel here to the states, so i’m absolutely thrilled some of them are now at the gantt for the public to see. i’m also deeply grateful to those individuals who have supported this iteration of the show by contributing to the cost of shipping these very large works from france so that they could be included in this new presentation: mandy hauschild bowkett, vorlea & jerome chaney, sarah frandson dorfman, kristina linney, gina love & steven feldman (the love-feldman collection), julia mallory, whitney valentine-wafer, and lori and roger weeks. i’m immensely grateful as well to curator dexter wimberly and the entire team at the gantt center for granting me this opportunity. i feel so honored that my first institutional exhibition in the united states is at an institution like the gantt, and that these works will be on view for those in charlotte and surrounding areas to see.
this month, my first solo exhibition in london, titled black lilith rising, opens at albion jeune on october 13th. while the exhibition at the gantt feels like a bit of mini survey or retrospective of the last 4 years of my work and practice, this exhibition is an entirely brand new body of work that includes my first set of soft sculpture objects made from chunky yarns, nylons, thread, cast iron meat hooks, and sand, marking a new direction in my practice.
some of the paintings also feature fabric pieces stitched directly onto the canvas, which marks a return to a technique i first experimented with back in 2016 and 2017.
and finally in november, the gallery is also publishing my first monograph to coincide with the exhibition. we’ve been working on it for the past 6 months with designer herman lelie, and it’s going to include: images of new and older works, an essay by alayo akinkugbe, an artist interview written by colony little, and text excerpts pulled from my own writings and from poems by sonia sanchez and june jordan. there will also be images of works by other Black women artists that i’ve long admired, so i’m thrilled to be able to shine the spotlight on them through this publication as well. i’ve wanted to do a book for a few years, so when albion jeune informed me they wanted to publish one, i was both surprised and delighted (although i will also admit that it took a bit of time for it to feel real that it was actually going to happen). we’re currently putting the finishing touches on it and it’s going to print soon, so there’s more to come about this as well once it’s published…
boredom & experimentation in the studio + new research rabbit holes + new materials
following the opening of let’s dance our way back home at consortium museum last october, i felt pretty depleted creatively. i had poured so much of myself, my research, and even my body into those paintings i wasn’t sure what i even wanted to attempt next. what i did quickly realize back in january while trying to finish painting for what was supposed to be my first solo exhibition in dallas, tx, was that i surprisingly found myself craving something materially different to sink my creative teeth into. i painted a few new pieces and while they were fine enough, i felt deeply dissatisfied and bored with them, and with painting in general. additionally, the strain of managing the deterioration of one of my gallery relationships and knowing i needed to leave it was weighing on me pretty heavily, so most of my daily focus was on winding things down, resolving unfinished business, and determining how to move forward without their representation. january and february were pretty rough, i’m not even going to lie to you. i was bored, uninspired, frustrated, and reckoning with the fact that much of what i’d hoped for and had spent 2023 and 2024 working towards was either falling away, had become dead weight i could no longer carry, or had turned out to be a dead end altogether. eventually, unforeseen changes with another gallery lead to me deciding to cancel my solo exhibition with them for the spring altogether; once i did, i returned to the studio feeling a bit lighter and eager to pull at the threads of new ideas that were suddenly coming in faster than i could keep track of mentally or in my sketchbook. nearly all of them involved using either a new material or returning to elements i’d previously played with years earlier in my practice: embroidering text on fabric, hand stitching fabrics to the canvas, painting with rags and my hands instead of brushes, repurposing used paint rags to create large prayer flags, using polyfill and used paint rags to construct soft, squishable objects, aboyami & worry dolls, etching text onto mirrors, and ditching solid, monochrome colored backgrounds as the bases for my paintings for something with more dimensionality.
as new ideas and questions streamed in, multiple sources of inspiration began to appear and converge for me simultaneously as well. listening to an astrology reading on the chani app about venus retrograde lead me down an unexpected research rabbit hole involving ancient mesopotamian and sumerian poetry, namely about the goddess inanna and written by her high priestess, enheduanna, who is now understood to be the first named author in history. conversations with my mom about my grandmother had me reflecting on “hard” and “soft” in terms of physical material and one’s state of being as a result of life experiences. the powerful refrain at the end of sonia sanchez’s “wounded in the house of a friend”, ‘i shall become a collector of me and put meat on my soul’ was echoing in my dreams at times. i went back to hand crocheting long rope-like braids out of the chunky, velvet yarn i’d purchased and had begun making large knotted objects out of, near the end of 2023. i realized much of the rage and grief i’d poured into a few of the works from the consortium exhibition ran much deeper than i was aware of, and both were not only still demanding release, but also asking for more study, so i went back to reading audre lorde and dove into works and interviews by june jordan.
by the time early spring rolled around and i’d accepted albion jeune’s invitation to do a solo exhibition in the fall, i had pretty solid sense of what i wanted to focus on in terms of both mediums and subject matter, but it still took a lot of ideating, experimentation, and time both in and out of the studio to start building the world and works that have become black lilith rising. drawing on astrology, sumerian poetry, my matrilineal ancestry & personal history, the works of black feminists & writers, and more, i spent the majority of my summer immersed in painting, stitching, learning how to sew, dyeing kinetic sand, reading volumes of literature & research on dark feminine archetypes across both world religions & history, dancing, sobbing, sweating, and channeling an outpouring of emotions in the studio. i began the year questioning if i could match the level of effort and execution i’d poured into the consortium show and if i really had anything of substance to express in this moment. by july’s end, i found myself looking around at what i was constructing and realizing that i actually did, but i needed to express it in different forms beyond what i had grown comfortable with. i had simply needed to allow myself to not only go beyond my comfort zone creatively, but also more fully acknowledge and commune with my own anger, something i’ve always shied away from doing throughout much of my life, but especially during these last five years. while in the past, i’ve channeled my anger into my creative work while experiencing the intense physical and emotional sensations of it in my body, this time, i’ve found that my rage is less of an explosive outburst and instead a steadier, more exacting form that is grounding and yields a level of clarity and focus that i’m able to act from in a way that serves me just as constructively as giving space to the more raw expression of it would previously. in this regard, i’m very much reminded of audre lorde’s discussion of the usefulness of anger, and her words have definitely guided my gestation process with this body of work.
there’s so much more about this that i want to dig into and share concerning these works, but for now, i’ll leave you with a small overview about the exhibition, and you can view the gallery’s exhibition page here.
“a’driane explores historical, mythological, and liberatory Black feminist and divine feminine figures—both iconic and personal, including women in her own family—to examine how women and femmes have harnessed power and a full emotional range across time. Through this lens, she shares her own journey of self-actualization, mapping the psychological and somatic terrain of womanhood. Her work reveals how sacred rage and beauty are not opposites, but intertwined forces—capable of transforming one another and giving rise to something powerful and new.”
life + family
our summer was “not too chaotic, but not too boring” and “not too lowkey, but not overexhilarating” according to austin, recent 5th grade graduate. in fact, adrian and brennan recently graduated as well: adrian from 8th and brennan from 12th. brennan turned 18 back in february, got his driver’s permit, and spent his summer taking the subject matter tests required to obtain his ged. he worked incredibly hard to reach this goal and completed his final test, english language arts, in august. he was a bit nervous about the essay component that’s a part of that particular test, but in the lead up to it, i made it a point to remind him daily that he’s actually a very good writer, he just has to turn the volume down on his inner critic who is an especially harsh editor. he passed and out of all 4 exams, he scored the highest on ela. i told him to take it as evidence that mama was right and the kid can write!
as we begin another school year with the younger two starting their junior and high school years, and with brennan beginning his gap year, i have found myself straddling the threshold between the past and the present, reminiscing on all that the last 18 years have contained and how much each of my children have grown in a multitude of ways over just the last 5 years alone. i’m often holding a sense of gratitude for what’s being experienced in the present, wanting to run back in time to re-experience certain moments and versions of them all over again, and an odd mix of anxiety, curiosity, and hope about our individual and collective futures simultaneously. i also struggle with guilt, wondering if i’ve personally done enough to prepare brennan for young adulthood, especially since most of his teen years have been spent being homeschooled and isolated during the height of the pandemic. but then my mind wanders back in time to my earliest days of new motherhood when i brought him home from the hospital to a friend’s couch because that’s what i called home those first few months after my discharge from the air force. i remember breastfeeding him in the backseat of my toyota corolla and crying in the parking lot of the unemployment office in downtown d.c. and questioning if i was going to be able to make it to the end of the week, let alone raise a child on my own. when we started homeschooling during the early years of the pandemic, that same fear i had back when he was a newborn seized me at varying moments, leaving me to question if we were doing the right thing by trying to protect our health, resurrect his love for learning, what impacts would be seen, felt if we “failed” him, if he’d be able to actually complete high school, if he’d ever be able to recover from the trauma middle school had imprinted onto his self-image, etc. there have been a lot of tears, a lot of therapy, a lot of de-conditioning, relearning, along with so many leaps forward and growth. through it all, brennan has shown up by navigating his teen years—even in the most difficult of moments— with a strength, heart, level of critical thinking, humor, curiosity, and emotional intelligence that honestly pushes me to continue discovering how i can be the parent he needs no matter how challenging it is or how inadequate i may feel in the process. i’m so proud of him and grateful that we’ve made it this far despite the odds and even my own missteps as a parent. If i could go back to that day in the parking lot or to the days when i was struggling to keep a roof over our heads and food in his infant belly, i would give us both the biggest hug (and some money, let’s be real!), and tell us both that despite what it may look or feel like, we’re going to make it. when i start to panic about his transition into young adulthood, i reflect on how far we’ve come and all we’ve grown through, and that gives me both hope and comfort; i know with continued support and time, he’ll soar in his own way.
back in june, we went to ocean city, md for a mini-vacation to kick off the kids’ graduation celebrations. our hotel was right on the beach, making it easy to wake up early and walk along the shoreline as the sun rose. i still miss those walks along with the sound of the waves crashing, which we’d also fall asleep to each night. it was a quick trip, but a restorative one for all of us, and for me personally, it served as a balm for my inner teen who used to take trips to OCMD with my parents and siblings in my late teens that i struggled to enjoy for a number of reasons. if you had told 17 year old me that years later i’d be walking the beach and boardwalk with my own family experiencing moments of sheer delight and feeling a sense of contentment with myself and the life i’ve been fortunate to build, i likely would’ve thought you were speaking to the wrong person, as back then i didn’t believe such “normal” experiences and healthy familial relationships would be a reality for me. and yet, at age 42, they very much are, and for this i am unabashedly grateful.
what i’m reading + listening to + enjoying
read/reading/re-reading:
flash of the spirit: african & afro-american art & philosophy, robert farris thompson
inanna, lady of the largest heart, betty de shong meador
inanna: queen of heaven and earth, her stories and hymns from sumer,diane wolkstein and samuel noah kramer
night sky with exit wounds, ocean vuong
writing in space 1973-2019, lorraine o’grady
communion, bell hooks
an autobiography, assata shakur
in defense of dabbling, karen walrond
currently being influenced by:
dark feminine archetypes, deities, and goddesses from literature, history, and world religions, including african traditional religions.
writings on grief (especially loved this piece by jessica dore)…and rage.
astrology
listening to:
florence + the machine
kaytranada
flyleaf
hayley williams
my chemical romance
avenged sevenfold
betty davis
fiona apple
prince (always, you know this!)
my black lilith rising playlist (best listened to on shuffle mode, fyi)
seen/watching:
older seasons of project runway + lego masters & lego masters jrs with adrian & austin
k-pop demon hunters (waaaaay more golden than we initially thought it would be!)
a place of rage by pratibha parmar
the wonderfully weird world of gumball (finally back after a 7 year break!)
enjoyed/enjoying:
implementing a new approach to color in my paintings + a much slower pace in the studio
hand crocheting chunky yarns
trader joe’s buffalo ranch popcorn
giving offerings to the ocean + rivers
growing out my hair + getting it braided
artists i love + learn from:
cecilia vicuna
christine aye tjoe
joke amusan
maria luisa pacheco
tania brugera
diovanna frazier
final thoughts
lastly, a few smaller updates:
a couple of weeks ago, i recorded my first performance piece and while it’s meant to be performed in live, i also wanted to share it in a digital format, so i’ve revived my vimeo channel. you can view it in full here.
i do have some works available in a variety of sizes and a range of varying prices, so if you’re interested in seeing what’s available, send my studio manager an email: admin@addyeb.com.
i’ve made several changes to my website and will be continuing to do so throughout the rest of the year, as i work to make it a more comprehensive digital home and archive for my creative work and future offerings; take a look and let me know what you think, i’d love to hear from you. i have lorraine o’grady to thank for the push to get back to maintaining my website and building my archives; viewing her website shortly after she transitioned was a clarifying moment for me in many ways.
we’ll, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this one; i know it was lengthy, but hopefully you enjoyed catching up on everything that’s unfolded for me over the last year and getting a glimpse of what i’m putting out into the world in this season. as troubling as things are for so many of us, i remind myself and my kids daily that part of doing resistance work involves committing not only to doing what we can to protect one another, but also maintaining a radical imagination; envisioning the futures that we want and are fighting to bring into reality. every day as i bear witness to the atrocities unfolding both here and abroad, i write down what i want to call into being for our collective liberation and commit to saying it out loud and then finding a way to put that into practice. i hope that you are able to find many ways to do the same.
ever forward,
a’driane
