ARTIST STATEMENT

My work addresses addiction recovery and the healing of the Inner Child as an adult. It is driven by the historically disproportionate barriers faced by Black Americans to acquire human needs such as clean water, fresh produce, mental health, and holistic medicine to treat chronic disease. Among my current projects is a series of copper intaglio etchings. As the nature of the intaglio process is one that involves the covering and the stripping of a metal surface to engrave a particular image, this focused exposure is etched in a non-toxic ferric chloride and eventually imprinted on soaking wet cotton paper—a very fragile and delicate material. I chose to use this phenomenon as a means of seeing memory materialized in two dimensions. First a sketch, then a mirror, then the visual remnants of progress printed in ink. The series reads as a childhood fable, and each scene explores a unique moment of the healing process: rediscovering the body after childhood, relinquishing trauma, and finding clarity post-relapse. The history and mystery of the Black experience in the wilderness of America is also a driving thought in exploring the reality of hidden histories, un-documented manuscripts, Black American spirituality, and biblical spiritual guides. 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.

My platform seeks to heal, to combat the injustices of intergenerational trauma, and to promote cross-cultural understanding. The derogatory of the black body as perpetuated through American popular culture and consumerism must be addressed to reclaim beauty, joy, and freedom for people of color. In the recovery of our human identity, the imagination of people worldwide can embrace healing through experiencing art, one story at a time.

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 at the Wright’s 2025 60th anniversary gala. The artist continually seeks to engage with new opportunities in the future.