Bio
Diamond Gray was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She has participated in the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Assets 4 Artists residency and the Studio Museum in Harlem's Museum Education Practicum. As an artist and art educator, both roles inform her art and pedagogical practices. She is passionate about BIPOC and LGBTQIA+youth and encourages her students to focus on process, research, experimentation, and produce works that mirror their lives.
Artist Statement
I utilize art as storytelling, healing, and reclaiming practice. As a Black queer woman, art is an avenue I use to document, archive, and tell my family's history. I come from a long line of matriarchs that cultivate community, care, and devotion; My art is an homage to the erasure of the voices and presences of Black women and femmes in history. Specifically through clothing, hair, India ink, paper, collage, drawing, video, sculpture. Additionally, I use audio to record my family's migration throughout the United States as a Black working-class woman. I continue the tradition of maintaining their existences through various forms of art.
Art is my salve to heal the various traumas in my life connected to my body, Blackness, gender, and familial death. Generational trauma is not uncommon amongst families, mainly descendants of chattel slavery. The therapeutic process of drawing, collaging, and printmaking is my outlet to cope with this. Essentially, I use my art practice to mend wounds, celebrate my ancestors, and recognize the thriving community I hail from.