BIOGRAPHY

Artist Shanequa Gay works in painting, illustration, video, performance, and monumental sculpture. Her multidisciplinary practice re-evaluates concepts of tradition, place, and storytelling. Liberating art historical tropes from tradition, the artist creates not only entirely new visual languages, but also entirely new narratives – particularly concerning the visibility, autonomy, and representation of Black bodies in art. She is a dream-weaver, a change seeker, and an archivist of cultural memory - collapsing fantasy and reality, past and present, in works which seek new truths for the future of Black people everywhere.

Gay has exhibited her work at such prestigious institutions as the Chattanooga African American Museum, the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Hammonds House Museum, Emory University, Le Musée Des Beaux-Arts De Montréal, The Ackland Museum, Mason Murer, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of public institutions such as The Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA), The Ackland Museum (Chapel Hill, NC), and The Oglethorpe University Museum (Atlanta, GA); as well as the private collections of Michelle Obama, Arthur Lewis, Sara & John Shlesinger, Eden Bridgeman and Greg Sklenar.

Gay holds a BA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA from Georgia State University. The artist lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.

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