Black Artist Spotlight

KY VASSOR

The city I was raised and live in, Baltimore, shapes my practices in mixed media illustration usually in smaller formats such as on mirrors or paper, but most recently I've begun working on murals. The themes of my work are based in the protection of community relics, healing interpersonal trauma, and the belief that healing oneself is also a way to engage in community healing. I often reclaim objects that I find in my community or home, re purposing them as canvases, frames, or characters within my work to illustrate to viewer's that the accessibility to heal a community often lies in finding new ways to re purpose or establish community resources. As a part of my work, this emphasis of accessibility often entails researching other communities and bringing that knowledge back to my own.

It is my life's work to live up to the tradition laid by other great Baltimore artists that came before me by continuing to preserve community practices through curating and cataloguing the experiences of Baltimore residents through shared stories that I choose to weave in to mixed media illustrations. It is my aim to honor the people I live with in Baltimore through my work. A community need I saw between 2019, the start of a global pandemic and further mass uprisings, and 2021 were calls for hope, upacking interpersonal community trauma, and how to healthily execute forms of self preservation. These images are direct messages for those within my community that are the most vulnerable during mass upheaval.