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How I Hate to Leave

Akea Brionne

How I Hate to Leave

2022

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Akea Brionne

How I Hate to Leave

2022

Physical Qualities Jacquard tapestry, Poly-fil, and rhinestones, 50 × 70 in. (127 × 177.8 cm.)
Portfolio/Series from the series "An Ode To (You)'all"
Credit Line Purchased as the gift of the Joshua Johnson Council in Honor of Christopher Bedford, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, 2016–2022; and Art Fund established with exchange funds from gifts of Dr. and Mrs. Edgar F. Berman, Equitable Bank, N.A., Geoffrey Gates, Sandra O. Moose, National Endowment for the Arts, Lawrence Rubin, Philip M. Stern, and Alan J. Zakon
Object Number 2022.265
Akea Brionne’s series An Ode to (You)’all pays homage to four important women in her family— her great-grandmother and three great-aunts, the Phelps sisters. These women sacrificed to ensure the men in their family, and future generations, could move north and take opportunities that would allow them to achieve upward mobility. From Black leisure and romantic relationships to young children from the family school, An Ode to (You)’all affectionately displays the Phelps sisters’ time in Columbus, Mississippi. Brionne adapted a trove of her family’s photographs dating from the 1920s through the 1950s by reproducing them as jacquard textiles, then carefully hand-sewed embellishments onto their surfaces. Together, these works are a window into understanding Black motherhood and honoring its legacy across generations in the artist’s family.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2022; the artist
Jessica Bell Brown and Ryan N. Dennis, Mississippi Museum of Art, "A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration," April 9, 2022 to September 11, 2022; Circulated to co-organizer, The Baltimore Museum of Art, October 30, 2022 to January 29, 2023; Brooklyn Museum, org. by Kimberli Gant with Indira A. Abiskaroon, March 3, 2023 to June, 2023; California African American Museum org. by Essence Harden, August 5, 2023 to August 18, 2023; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, org. by Anthony Graham with Matthew Villar Miranda; Chicago Cultural Center, January 25, 2025 to April 27, 2025.
Brown, Jessica Bell and Ryan N. Dennis, eds. A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. Baltimore Museum of Art and Mississippi Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2022, pg. 122-125.

Artist

Akea Brionne

born New Orleans, LA 1996

Meet Akea Brionne

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