We are born into bodies inscribed with histories that we do not control, a complex mix of truth and trauma, archetype and stereotype. As we walk the earth at a specific time and place, we are met with expectations and limitations based on the bodies we hold — but the force of our very nature empowers us to reimagine and create new paradigms writ large. This is the magic of Panamanian American artist Nydia Blas, who uses photography, collage, video, and books to render intimate scenes of Black girl bliss.
.
In her first monograph, Revival (Kris Graves Projects, April 2021), Blas takes us inside her world, a space of exquisite sensitivity where she is free to explore, confront, and celebrate the very essence of body and soul. Using her lived experiences as a girl, woman, and mother, Blas carefully weaves allegorical images of the feminine into majestic tapestries of resilience, resistance, and reclamation through what she describes as a “Black feminine lens”.
.
Growing up in the predominantly white college town of Ithaca, New York, Blas was introduced to folklore as a child when her Aunt Beverly gifted a copy of Virginia Hamilton’s book The People Could Fly: American Black Folktale. Blas came to understand what matters most is choice. We hold the power to choose our own thoughts and beliefs, and use them to heal the wounds we carry, passed on from one generation to the next.
.
.
