G.A.S. Foundation is excited to introduce Erika Allen, an American social change artist embarking on an immersive three-week residency at the G.A.S. Farm House in Ikise. The residency forms part of our collaboration with the nonprofit art collective Floating Museum through The Burroughs Residency in Chicago, United States. Working across painting, installation, photography, multidisciplinary research, curatorial practice and literature, Erika's practice focuses on the healing arts, exploring how structural oppression impacts society and humanity, and seeking to understand, deconstruct and reveal its effects.
During her residency, Erika hopes to develop a new body of work through writing, research and connections with local traditional artisans. She is particularly interested in gaining a deeper understanding of earth-based materials, plant dyes, clay and other locally sourced materials. The residency will also offer her time to immerse herself in the farm and its surroundings, and through this, activate new ideas within her practice. In addition, she looks forward to contributing to farm life by planting seeds.
Erika's residency is generously supported by the Terra Foundation of American Art. To find out more about supporting G.A.S. Foundation, click here.
South Chicago Farm est 2015. Image courtesy of Eric Perez and FM.
What is the current focus of your creative practice?
My current practice focuses on earth-based work, exploring a series of capsules in both small and large scales through place-based earth builds on the South Side of Chicago. These works reflect Indigenous knowledge of terrascaping while also serving as a metaphor for the Black experience. The work incorporates objects that are re-found and re-formed, presented at both miniature and community scales. Through this, I aim to articulate a facet of the Black experience by exploring how organic materials can be broken down into their building blocks to create circular life. Materials that were once living decompose and regenerate into fertile soil, allowing new life to grow in perpetuity. I am also interested in the scale of site-based earthworks (5D).
Image courtesy of the artist.
What drew you to apply for this residency and how do you think it will inform your wider practice?
I was drawn to the opportunity to focus on my artistic practice within the context of my cultural framework and lineage. Being on the land in Ikise will allow me to spend time immersed in my surroundings, observe and learn from the environment.
Can you give us an insight into how you hope to use the opportunity?
I hope to observe and learn traditional techniques, where appropriate, to incorporate and carry forward in my practice. I also hope to use digital photography, writing and visual documentation as ways of exploring place-based remembrance and reclamation, through both witnessed and intentional collaborations with nature. I am interested in the unplanned symmetries that emerge when people are in harmony with and aligned with nature.
Ori. Image courtesy of the artist.
About Erika Allen
Erika Allen is a social change artist, with a focus on the healing arts related to understanding and deconstructing/revealing how structural oppression impacts society and humanity. Her arts practice for the last 25 years has focused on community based food systems and agriculture in the built environment. Reclamation of food, culture, spirit and the inherent arts that manifest outside of the traditional art world codex. Her work is practical and visible in the commons, carrying on traditional indigenous African and folk arts that work with the earth and nature. She integrates farms, spirit groves, edible landscapes, earth shaping and installations to communicate and activate our connections with plant medicines. Erika earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1992; MA, University of Illinois, Art Psychotherapy, 2000 and recently was honored with a Ph.D. in Public Health from University of Illinois.
Image of Erika Allen.
