Alicia Henry’s practice presents various figures and portraits made from textiles and other media, inspired by people she has known, and those she has encountered in her life. These works address ideas of individuality and community across time and space. With numerous approaches to scale, these works portray individual figures, and sometimes figures shown as collective group.

Included in Alicia Henry: 2012-2020  is a suite of intimate, small-scale frontal view portraits.  Many of these portraits have served as the starting point for much larger works realized later on. These portraits are not generic images of faces, but inspired by people the artist has known, or seen. Carefully, and colourfully delineated, each countenance engages with the viewer in an immediate but silent and contemplative exchange, as welcome witnesses to the other’s presence and dignity.

To view the entire suite of portraits, please click here.

As noted by Daina Augaitis,  Chief Curator Emerita at Vancouver Art Gallery, who curated Alicia Henry: Witnessing at the The Power Plant in 2019, in her overview of the artist’s practice:

Henry’s compelling compositions are drawn from a multitude of references: the artist’s own memories, her collection of West African masks and events on the street or on television, to name but a few. Imbued with her perspective as an African American woman, the figures assert themselves as timeless witnesses reflecting a variety of personal and social histories.

This exhibition is on view now at TrépanierBaer Gallery and is not to be missed!

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• Please ensure you are feeling well before visiting the gallery.
• Mask must be worn throughout the course of your visit.
• Hand sanitizer will be provided; we ask that you sanitize your hands upon entering the gallery.
• Visits will be limited to 30 minutes.
• Physical distancing protocols are in place and will be monitored.
• Please enter through the front door off 10^th Avenue SW and exit though the rear doors adjacent to the building lobby.

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Alicia Henry (born 1966, Illinois) lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee. Her first solo exhibition in Canada, titled Witnessing , premiered at The Power Plant in Toronto in 2019, and was also shown at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge that same year. Her exhibition Alicia Henry: 2012 -2020, opened at TrépanierBaer Gallery in Calgary in the Fall of 2020. Her work has also been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions, including the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville (2016); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2012); the Nashville International Airport (2002); the Cheekwood Museum, Nashville (2000); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (1997); and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1996). She has received numerous awards such as the Joan Mitchel Foundation award, the Ford Foundation Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship and, most recently, the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art. A native of Illinois, Henry received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA at Yale University at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Henry is currently a professor of art at Fisk University in Nashville, one of the oldest black universities in the United States.

Image Credit:
Untitled, 2017
Crayon, pastel on board
7.5″ x 4.5″