Dede Brown Featured In Bahamian Art & Culture Newsletter

Bahamian Artist Spotlight On
Women Artists of The Bahamas

Inspired by the exhibition now showing at The D’Aguilar Foundation, “The F Factor: Female Artists of The Bahamas,” [The Bahamian Art & Culture] newsletter turns the spotlight on a few of the numerous multi-talented and distinctively creative female artists working professionally in The Bahamas and abroad.

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Dede Brown
Fine Artist, Designer and Photographer

Dede Brown was born in Freeport, Grand Bahama in 1984. Shortly thereafter, her parents moved to Nassau where she has lived ever since. Brown studied Interior Design & Photography at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia for four years. She returned to Nassau in late 2006 and promptly started job hunting. She landed her first full time position as an Interior Designer at local architecture and design firm Alexiou & Associates. She worked there for three years until May 2010 when she made the life changing decision to become a self-employed artist, designer and photographer. She joined the PopopStudios Centre for the Visual Arts Community in April 2008 and is creating a sculpture piece for the new phase of the Airport Project.

In 2009, she participated in her first exhibition with partner and artist Dylan Rapillard at the Central Bank of The Bahamas. The work exhibited was a series of portraits, exploring Brown’s fascination with the human spirit and how it is reflected in facial expression and human form.

In 2010, she unveiled her “Cherry & Puppet Series” as part of another dual exhibition with Dylan Rapillard entitled “Dichotomy” exhibited at the Central Bank of The Bahamas. This body of work explored the iconography of the cherry and the nature of women in pop culture, drawn as puppets. This series continued into “Peep Show,” an exhibition held earlier this year at Popopstudios.

Brown is currently participating in an Artists-in-Residence Exchange Programme between the Ipswich & Colchester Museum Service and A Fine Line Cultural Practice in England and Popopstudios Visual Arts Centre here in The Bahamas as part of the ‘Stories of the World’ Programme, a project at the heart of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

The residency is entitled Material Response and in it Brown is exploring her Bahamian identity in a foreign place by incorporating aspects of Junkanoo as a symbol that represents ‘Bahamianness’ and gives Bahamians that unique identity that is different from anywhere else in the world.

“My work is mainly based around figurative drawing and painting, primarily focusing on the female form. I work in several different mediums including, inks, acrylics, oils, graphite, collage, and most recently, costume-making and sculpture.

“The current work I am creating explores self identity, and the ‘celebration of life’ through ‘Junkanoo’. These ideas are expressed through paintings and costume. The paintings reflect imagery of seemingly ‘anonymous’ female figures – this has been used deliberately to create a sense of anonymity – something that I often feel as a minority from a small country and that I’m sure many people feel from across the globe. Many of us want to belong, want to be proud of the country we are a part of…so I do not seek to give this work a negative connotation but am merely exploring a subject that I deal with on a daily basis, particularly when not in The Bahamas.” – Dede Brown

During Brown’s current artist residency in England, she is exploring her Bahamian identity by incorporating aspects of Junkanoo in her paintings and in costume-making.

Dede Brown’s “Material Response Artist Residency” Work:

(Read her blog. It’s good.)

All of Dede Brown’s artwork images are copyrighted and photographed by the artist.
Photos of Dede Brown by Julie Carpenter. All rights reserved.