Ciara Elle Bryant: A Vivrant Thang
Ciara Elle Bryant is a multidisciplinary creative residing in Dallas, TX. Bryant uses photography and mixed media techniques to discuss the identity of black culture and how it exists in the new millennium.
RR: Hello Ciara, you’ve recently had a lot of success in Dallas, curating an exhibition at 500x titled Vivrant Thang, and had your work displayed for the Nasher window program. How’s the wave treating you?
CEB: It really is a wave, But the wave has been interesting. It has given me a ton of insight on my art practice. It has also had me go through a bunch of ups and downs.
RR: I know you are a multidisciplinary artist, but I want to begin at what I believe is the core of your practice. How did you first get started working with photography?
CEB: Man I really just picked up a camera again. I was in Arizona and something was like, “go buy a camera.” So I went to Best Buy and got this lil cheap fuji point and shoot and it thrusted me back into making art. After that I just enrolled in a darkroom class and fell in love all over again. Medium format really shaped my art practice. It required me to focus and pay attention to the little things, but it gave me a lot of freedom to experiment with my art practice.
RR: There is a lot of self portraiture in your work and placing yourself within a piece whether it be a photograph or installation. What inspires you to take this approach?
CEB: I am always my first model. Self portraiture in my work started as a need. I have always had limited time due to school and work so I was always available. Lol, so it just happened.
I will say over time it has been the main focus because my work is so personal. Almost everything I am making is about my experience. The question is always how can I see myself in these moments … or how can I relay this feeling or emotions with just my physical body in an image.
Ciara Elle Bryant, Armor: 1994-2000, Installation, NFS, 2020 (photo courtesy: 500x gallery)
RR: How do you think your approach expands when you start to incorporate the three dimensional aspect in your work? Such as your recent installation at the Nasher Sculpture Center; Server.
CEB: Server: A Streamed Revolution as an installation can only be manifested and viewed in a 3D sense. Since most of the material is based on things I have curated on the internet it had to be pulled out and made physical. If it was on the screen it would not have the same effect. It has to be a whole damn room for you to feel the intention and power behind it. The image on a screen now becomes and object, now that object is forcing you to hold attention to it.
“Ciara Elle Bryant’s Server: A Streamed Revolution is a physical manifestation of virtual space, comprising objects, photographs, screen grabs, moving images, and an audio playlist in an environmental installation that transforms the Nasher vestibule into a document of the current reality of Black culture. Culled from social media channels, news outlets, literature, and other online sources over the past several months, Bryant’s imagery focuses on the major societal upheavals of 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic, which is disproportionately affecting Black people and communities of color, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, which has led to worldwide protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. A true document of our current moment, Server: A Streamed Revolution crucially centers on the experience of Black people. Bryant’s dense collaging of images and media, as well as her focus on Black identity, situates her work among that of photographers Carrie Mae Weems and Hank Willis Thomas, while her expansion of media assemblage to the scale of architecture recalls Kurt Schwitters’s Merzbau (1923-1937) or Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii (1995).”
RR: We recently entered a different environment with the pandemic and I know you completed your MFA at Southern Methodist University during this shift. Has this affected your way of working? If so, what are some of the adjustments you’ve made to continue to make work?
CEB: MANNNNNN. I have yet to really get back in the habit of making. I think the biggest thing is Yes, I graduated in a pandemic with my Masters. One, doing a Masters program just takes a toll on you, but during a world crisis, its just a physical beating. I have been very intentional with working and not working. I now know that this time, where I am not physically making work, is time for me to do admin stuff and research. But I am also paying more attention to other projects that aren’t requiring me to make work but to do work around other ideas.
RR: Sounds like the admin work also went into the exhibition you recently curated at 500x gallery, Vivrant Thang. Did you happen to learn anything new during that experience and process? Was there any outcome you are especially proud of; for yourself or the artists that took part?
CEB: So Vivrant Thang was a job. I did everything. Approved emails, graphics, checking up on artists, constant transparency and communication with everything and everyone. I think the biggest take away from that experience for me was that if I want something that I should make sure I get it. I had to be demanding and a Boss Bitch (a reference to Jer’Lisa Devezin sculpture) to make sure everything was the way I wanted it.
I am really proud of how much exposure the artist in the show got. For some, being in that show was a launching pad for the Dallas art scene to peak interest. Vivrant Thang set them up for a few more great opportunities to come in the next year.
Virtual Tour provided by 500x Gallery in Dallas, TX
RR: I have to ask this because you’ve mentioned how much Miami has had an impact on your life and your work. Since moving to Dallas, has Texas influenced much of your work as well?
CEB: Yes! So I Iive in Oak Cliff. We have been on this side of Dallas now for ten years and I fucking love it. Probably wont ever live anywhere else in Dallas. It has a huge impact on what and how I make. Every photograph that I have staged out in the world has been somewhere in South Dallas, West Dallas, or Oak Cliff. A few of my works during my grad program talk about what is going on in the area. From the aftermath of redlining and the impact of systematic oppression to just the lack of access to food and medical facilities in the area.
RR: You don’t say Dallas without thinking Oak Cliff. Do you have anything on the horizon coming? Let us know.
CEB: I currently do not have anything on the horizon. I have had a few conversations about doing some artist panels and maybe being a juror on a few open calls. But we shall see what flourishes in the rest of 2020.
RR: We’ll be paying attention. Thank you so much Ciara.