September 16th – October 13th, 2022
Blending Families through Cultural Textiles
Fabric is a major component in Raneece’s work and how she chooses to explore and express her cultural identity. Recently she started digging deeper into her Ancestry in an attempt to pinpoint where exactly her ancestors were from. Though not 100% accurate this gave her a starting point to research textiles from specific regions and hopefully create from a more informed place. Inspired by their designs and processes this series is inspired by, Akwete and Okene cloths in Nigeria and the Machilipatnam Kalamkari from Andhra Pradesh, Southern India, a block-printed cloth with hand-painted intricate details. Her goal was to combine these two patterns as well as the techniques of the Kalamkari into one. She used screenprinting to translate the weavings of the Akwete and Okene and block printing and painting for the Kalamkari.
While creating these patterns her goal was not to copy the examples presented but, to be inspired by them through the process to make her own fusion, a self-portrait.
Raneece Buddan is a Jamaican visual artist who resides in Treaty 6 territory, Amiswaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). She immigrated to Canada in 2015 and completed her BFA in Art and Design with Distinction at the University of Alberta in 2020. In her work, she focuses on her cultural identity as a Jamaican woman of Afro and Indo-Caribbean ancestry. She shows the beautiful merging of these cultures and the complexities of being of multiracial identity in Jamaican society, particularly around hair and skin complexion. This is depicted by replacing her skin tone with fabrics meant to represent each ethnicity as well as incorporating synthetic hair. Her process is based on material exploration and finding figures within the material – the wood grains and mounds of clay. Her practice includes oil painting, woodworking, clay sculpting, printmaking and weaving.
Raneece Buddan will be speaking at The Alberta University of the Arts on September 16th through the Visiting Artist Speaker Series hosted by the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. The talk will take place in person from 10-11am at the Stanford Perrot Lecture Theatre.
Documentation by Han Sungpil.
