What Does It Mean for Heaven to Be a Muddy Riverbed?

LOS ANGELES — Walking via Diedrick Brackens’s solo exhibition, heaven is a muddy riverbed, the phrase “ain’t I a male?” kept repeating in my head. It’s an adaptation of the well-known “Ain’t I a girl?” speech Sojourner Reality created at the 1851 Women’s Legal rights Conference. Truth’s terms have been in defiance of the paltry notion of Black girls in the United States, the deliberate denial of her femininity and total personhood. In Brackens’s exhibition, the textile artist deftly brings together his weavings with his primary poetry to generate an environment of reverence for the men and women, animals, and ideas that culture demeans. Like Truth’s words, Brackens’s works problem site visitors to the exhibition: When you experience me, do you see all that I am? All that I do? All that I comprise?

The exhibition focuses on the artist’s use of catfish as a motif. It starts with his reimagining of 3 Black males — Steven Booker, Carl Baker, and Anthony Freeman — who drowned in 1981 when a law enforcement boat capsized in Texas. Arrested for the duration of a Juneteenth celebration, they have been in handcuffs when it went down and subsequently fulfilled their deaths in Lake Mexia — eternal rest in a muddied lakebed. Brackens grew up in the vicinity of that lake and generally represents these men as catfish, an low-cost bottom-feeder fish that is a staple in Southern cooking but if not has a lot of negative connotations. But in Brackens’s textiles, these fish grow to be regal, tranquil, religious, powerful, embodying the marvel that is any living staying on Earth. He asks us to see all that the fish are, all that they do, all that they can consist of.

All 9 weavings in the exhibition involve at minimum one particular fish, building the motif potent. Upon entering the gallery viewers are greeted with the exhibition’s eponymous get the job done, whose three fish and overall body of h2o are an ode to the drowned males. The purple and blue hues that compose the drinking water are woven in such a way that it appears pixelated, an optical illusion that transforms yarn into ripples. 1 fish is demonstrated mid-soar in a sleek arc its two counterparts down below repeat the exact shape. The piece sets the exhibition’s tone. A lot more than a mere portrayal, it is a meditation on catfish. They appear to swim by means of the gallery, swirl all around the viewer. Once in a while they interact with silhouetted adult men, circling their feet or becoming elevated in the air in exaltation. Just about every perform could be a concurrent scene from a solitary instant on a river, or various details in the life of the a few fish as they navigate their individual turbid waters.

Then there are the words. 4 poems by Brackens present surreal anchors through the show. Every single provides dimension and depth to the ideas of lifestyle and sacrifice, the load of the catfish as they carry the souls of the misplaced. “They will not kick out into unsure waters/ with the factors we stored for ourselves,” reads component of “fathers guard the nursery.” Around the exit is a modest shelf of books that impressed Brackens, their web pages highlighted. The use of these poems and placement of the texts reinforces Brackens’s weaving abilities, tying the exhibition jointly — yarns and threads as obvious in the structure of his operate as in the conceptual presentation of it.

Standing in the heart of the gallery, taking it all in, I feel about the exhibition title. What does it signify for heaven to be a muddy riverbed? Murky but flowing. Earthen, not celestial. Healthy and plentiful but not bright or apparent. Mysterious and cloudy from the stir trailing activity. Pushed much more by perception in a existence beneath the floor than any obvious proof. I’m encircled by woven parts, earning another sort of internet. I’m in the center, caught together with the catfish swimming in every sightline. My very own shadow once in a while blends with the silhouettes in the functions. I remember the defiance in Truth’s phrase and I speculate, nicely, ain’t this a heaven?

heaven is a muddy riverbed is on see at Craft Present-day (5814 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles) by way of May possibly 8. The exhibition was arranged by Holly Jerger.