Na'ye Perez

Region: MFA Annual

 My artistic practice is influenced by hip-hop music and personal experiences growing up in Columbus, Ohio, LA, and Camden, New Jersey. I consider my process as a type of remixing, similar to how a sound engineer or producer would sample hooks, beats, or choruses to create new music. I collage materials such as Backwoods, Swishers Sweets, magazines, historical archives, and personal memorabilia in conjunction with symbols, colors, and patterns to framework my art.

By navigating through personal experience and memory, the importance of intimacy within my community and my Blackness helps establish my narrative and modes of accessibility. My work uses everyday interactions such playing cards in gallery spaces, riding bikes through the hood, and embracing friends I ain’t seen in a minute. These moments are juxtaposed between hidden symbolism of music, fashion, and Black history. By shifting the narratives to one of embrace and empowerment, without a reliance on trauma. Noting these importances, they become intertwined with resistance and the Black presence.