Opens Saturday July 8 at 4pm,
please rsvp here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conversations-in-patterns-textiles-figures-portraits-jamilla-okubo-ify-chiejina-tickets-35701119008

It is an exhibition that speaks to the process of art by Kenyan American artist Jamilla Okubo and Nigerian American artist Ify Chiejina.

Jamilla Okubo is a Kenyan-American artist who is a DC Native who lived in New York City. She is a graduate of Parsons the New School for Design with a BFA in Integrated Fashion Design, concentrating on Fine Arts as an integration of fashion and surface pattern design. Her work explores cultural identity and black culture, and aims to use her interdisciplinary concentration as a medium to address topics within her culture while focusing on redefining the stereotyped narrative of the African Diaspora. Her work is heavily inspired by the art of storytelling through textiles and fashion, black culture, and contemporary African fashion and music.

Ify Chiejina (Ifeatuanya Chiejina) is a visual artist born and raised in NYC, a black Igbo female visual artist with ideas, thoughts, and truths that are reflective of Nigerian customs and traditions. She primarily works in acrylic paint on canvas and or paper, and also in wet and dry based mediums such as charcoal and distorts the human figure. Portrait of Father, Their Time in the Ivory Coast, and A Photograph Sent, are examples of pieces that are direct renderings of photographs. Her portraits and figurative pieces express emotions, personalities and character. As a visual artist, she is concerned with identifying the significance of self with feelings and thoughts, than depicting the head and body due to her upbringing, influences of German Abstract Expressionists, Expressionists, and Graphic artists.