CARA MARIE YOUNG

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work addresses how Black communities have persisted despite the traumatic experiences of chattel slavery and the oppressive barriers of racism. Among my current projects is a series of paintings, utilizing lemon juice on paper as the primary medium. This method is based on a particular property of lemon juice which, after it dries, becomes a kind of invisible ink, when the paper is exposed to intense heat, the once-imperceptible image vividly appears. I chose to use this phenomenon as a means of exposing the lived realities of Black historical figures and honoring their contributions. This ghostly method of painting also speaks to the hidden history and sometimes indescribable nature of the Black experience.

I am responding to life lived in a black body. With an urge to envision new futures that are inclusive of blackness, I am driven to use a variety of media to reveal and expose black life and contemporary systems seeking to erase their presence and history. Through dissecting the various strands within the cord that connects us all as human beings, the mediums of paint, paper, rope, clay and harvested materials merge to express the social displacement of skin color and the colored boundaries between our communities. 

Knowing the diaspora that Black Americans share will always connect us, I feel driven to use my platform to observe and combat the injustices of racism, promoting transnational healing and cross-cultural understanding. In addition to this, I am seeking to break the derogatory of the black body as perpetuated through American popular culture and consumerism… that which has continued to cripple the image of Black beauty, Black joy, and Black liberation. Like many contemporary Black artmakers today, I strongly desire to deconstruct these images while reconstructing their power, ultimately combating their misrepresentation, and creating a place for an unseen beauty that has never had a home on American soil.

BIO

 Cara Marie Young is an artist from Atlanta, Georgia based in Detroit, Michigan. Her current interdisciplinary painting practice is an evolving response to the human experience, concerned with issues of race in the American landscape and the reality of life in her own skin. The artist seeks to engage with the community around her, recently exhibiting work at the 101st Michigan House of Representatives in 2022 and 2023, at Olayami Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum and at The Feminist Art Museum in 2020. She was an exhibiting artist and speaker in the Race Forward Facing Race Conference in Fall 2016 at the Hilton Atlanta and a Dean’s Diversity Fellow at Wayne State University from 2019-21. The artist recently exhibited artwork at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American history from July-December of 2023 and is seeking to engage with new opportunities in the future.