Bio
Krystle Lemonias is recognized for her influences from the intersecting concepts of class, commodification, gender, economic inequity, citizenship, and labor rights. She believes immigrant Black communities contribute richly to the United States' cultural diversity and the workforce despite the barriers faced. Her works primarily explore women’s domestic labor contributions that play an integral role in the function of our society and contemplates the domestic socialization passed on through generations to do these jobs.
She uses found materials, patios, printmaking methods, and iconography to stitch together these themes with personal narratives. Her works have been exhibited at Blum and Poe in the Show Me the Signs campaign for #sayhername and Make America What America Must Become at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans. She has also shown at the New York Academy of Art in the AXA Art Prize Exhibition in 2020, and at the International Print Center of New York in the New Prints: Umbra in 2019.
Lemonias was born in Jamaica in 1989, and spent most of her young adulthood in New Jersey. She acquired a BFA in printmaking from New Jersey City University in 2018. She is currently a graduate assistant and Master’s in Fine Arts candidate at the University of South Florida.
Artist Statement
I'm interested in the stories of immigrant Black women doing domestic labor whose contributions play an integral role in the function of our society. My practice establishes formal and intuitive processes that use performances, installation, found materials, patois, and printed iconography to stitch together intersecting themes with personal narratives. These works explore my mother’s socialization and, in turn, my socialization to do this type of work as well as the complexities in the spaces regarding class, gender, citizenship, commodification, economic inequity, and labor rights.
My position as an immigrant Black woman and visual artist enables me to share my first-hand accounts and the stories of those around me. My art practice is guided by conversations with my mother and other women who have immigrated and are employed in various domestic service jobs. They are predominantly the breadwinners of their households and the inspirational starting point for my research. This investigation has led to Patricia Hill Collins and Brooke Newman’s intersectional feminist concepts that inspired my use of baby clothes of the child my mother cares for, which has been patched together to create my most recent fiber works. This exploration visualizes the economic inequity that has been built into society’s value of Black women and laws that continue to subjugate us, especially immigrants who are most vulnerable without legal status. This inquiry moves me to critically examine the lived experiences of Caribbean women through my exploration with the performance of inherent power relations when doing domestic labor in America.
The work I create is grounded in principles of painting, sculpture, and drawing and features diverse representations of Black immigrant women, who are my central subject. This work shows women of the African diaspora as multifaceted individuals with agency; individuals that are documented and undocumented people, serving as essential participants to America’s workforce.
@empress1989kl
