Department of Fine and Performing Arts

Brianna L. Taylor

Metamorphosis

Thesis Statement

My senior show is titled “Metamorphosis”. For my senior exhibition I want to bring awareness to the racial and gender inequalities that women of color face in the art world. When you go to art museums and galleries, you are more likely to see work by white artists. For my project I wanted to research and highlight some female artists who I never seen before, and whose work also explores themes of race and gender as well. I designed portrait posters that represent the women of color who are rarely seen in art. I also looked at different museums and their collections to see if there were big racial and gender gaps within the artists they exhibited. In my research I went to an art museum and found that female artists were in the minority, and women of color were an even smaller part of that group. I thought a good way to express my findings was to incorporate them into a booklet alongside photographs I had taken while in the museum.

  • Representation has always been important to me. So I decided to use this project as a way to explore representation in the art world. A major influence for the theme of my project was the anonymous female activist and artists group, The Guerilla Girls. They use art to bring awareness to gender issues, race, and politics. For my project, I decided to take a similar approach and focus on women of color in art. As an art student, I have learned about numerous white artists, specifically those who are men. If I wanted to know more about an artist of color, I would have to take extra steps to find out more about them. This, along with the lack of representation that women of color get at museums and art galleries, encouraged me to do my own research. Along with focusing on themes of race and gender, I also wanted to tie in a theme of change. I decided to use imagery of moths and flowers to symbolize that change. As a young woman of color, I would like to see changes made in the art world that reflect the world we live in today because there is a lot of art made by people of color that gets overlooked. Changes that encourage representation and diversity.