Krystle Lemonias is the winner of the Suncoast Black Arts Collaborative’s modern 2021 Black Muse exhibition, earning $1,000. Her profitable piece, A Portrait of the Earlier and Present, is a self-portrait created from inventive supplies that replicate critical moments in her daily life. Initially from Jamaica, Lemonias attended undergraduate college in New Jersey and is now pursuing a graduate degree in art out of the College of South Florida in Tampa.
“I feel developing has generally been an outlet to procedure my views,” says Lemonias. “I have constantly located techniques to use my arms to work via ideas, emotions or experiences—and it is serving as a history to sort of place a pinpoint on ordeals that are not European centric.”
Art is quite individual for Lemonias, and she makes use of it to tell her tale, from immigrating to The usa from Jamaica to her existing lifetime in art school.
Her experiences in The usa were the inspiration powering the piece she submitted to the Black Muse exhibition. She amassed several totally free shirts throughout her years right here, kinds that just about everybody has in their closet—from 5K runs or volunteering or higher school golf equipment. Lemonias understood she didn’t want to throw them away, as sustainability is crucial to her, so she obtained imaginative. She took the old shirts and made use of the material to create her award-successful portrait.
“I established the portrait of myself employing the shirts as a way to contextualize these activities that I have participated in, from superior school to a younger adult in my 20s,” she says. She provides that a lot of self-reflection went into this, as she assumed about coming from Jamaica and all that she has gotten to do given that then.
“The shirts have all been experiences that I’ve experienced listed here in The us,” she claims. “This portrait was an possibility for a little bit of gratitude for all that I’ve been capable to do, that I could afford—afford economically and also in phrases of time.”
However artwork is own for Lemonias, she provides that there is universality in it. “In thinking of the viewer, I make prospects and views that a person can inject their experience in, in various strategies. I know that [my art] will allow for these connections,” she points out. She says that she produces art mostly for herself, about her individual exclusive qualifications, but that she thinks all can find an facet to relate to.
If there is a takeaway that she hopes men and women have from her art, it is that each human has a loaded and powerful story, and that each human can make constructive connections with each and every other.
“I like my do the job to give alternatives for people today that are non-European to be centered as subjects,” she says. “There are lots of biases due to the fact of this absence of understanding of folks that are non-European that inhibit us living full lives. So my function is letting for an comprehending of point of view that is not centered in just becoming the assist, but [being] an individual that has the resilience to get via the numerous hurdles it takes in these areas to succeed, and enable for comprehending of these ordeals.”
