SHENEQUA is an Artprenuer who received her Masters of Design in Fashion, Body, & Garment at School of the Art Institute of Chicago under the mentorship of Nick Cave and Liat Smestad.

She has exhibited her works in Tangled Roots at InterUrban ArtHouse in Overland Park, KS, Performing Labor at Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco, CA, The Space We Grow Into at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL, and Mane N’ Tail at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO, to name a few.

A Featured Artist for Ties that Bind in American Craft Magazine and in the Kansas City Star she spoke about her process of weaving synthetic-hair in relationship to the African- American Hair Experience. 2014’s Windgate Fellow of the Center for Craft Creativity & Design. 2017-2018’s recipient of the inaugural YoungArts Daniel Arsham Fellowship, presented by the Ridinger-McLaughlin Family, SHENEQUA continues to reflect, create, and expand the process of weaving beyond the loom.

Statement

Woven Narratives is a visual story about SHENEQUA’s familial experiences and memories shared with the fearless women in her life. She weaves the memories of her birthplace St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands with the vibrant color palette, her upbringing in a single parent Kittitian home in Miami, Florida, and her familial experience in Ghana, West Africa where she learned to weave traditional Ghanaian textiles. She braids, bantu knots, and plaits synthetic-hair representing the hairstyles she grew up within the black hair salon and celebrates the idea of sisterhood, womanhood, sacred space, intimacy, identity, and beauty.

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