Khaleb Brooks

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

My name is Khaleb Brooks. I am an artist deeply interested in exploring black collective memory as a means of healing generational trauma. With a specific focus on archives I have centered story- telling and myth- making in my work to offer new perspectives on history. This work has taken the form of large scale paintings, print works, films and performance. My work centers the black figure, the body as a site of memory, pain, joy and loss. It recognises the body as an instrument, musical and performative but more than anything as an instrument of change, resistance, resilience, desire and protest. I am currently an artist in residence with Onassis Air’s Tailor- Made Fellowship where I am completing a research project in Brazil. I am identifying the connections between my family’s slave history, the materialities of the Atlantic and building on research I began in 2021 at The International Slavery Museum (ISM) in Liverpool, UK. For this project I am producing a multimedia archive of old photographs, collages, personal reflections, interviews and footage collected from both my family and in Brazil. Through this work I am creating a new methodology within my practice around archiving, offering greater discourse to African- diasporic cultural memory and further exploring what Saidiya Hartman refers to as “the auto- biographical example”, using oneself to understand and create history. Prior to this project I completed residencies with Tuxedo Residency and Iris Project...

Artwork