Yet, We Heal

       
Kailyn Bryant (b. Birmingham, AL) creates dynamic, richly colored multimedia artworks that articulate the ways in which identity, whether individual or collective, shape personal and political manifestations of grief. The tactility of identity markers, such as gender presentation or the styling of one's hair, serve as a starting point for these considerations. In the video works  two similar perspectives are exposed though unified symmetrically by animations, symbolizing the universal nature of loss that lies beneath the grieving process. By individualizing her subjects with varied colors, form, and textures, Bryant reconstructs the dynamic individual to highlight the scope of the fragments that synthesize into a community.

Untethered to any one medium, these paintings, sculptures, and films are multidimensional vignettes that facilitate a harmony between emotional and political healing. These explorations of interiority work to validate both the individual and collective experiences of loss; an increasingly quotidien circumstance following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020. Yet We Heal is a meditation for the future, a model for how we as a community can reconcile with individual and systemic trauma to acknowledge the past while remaining optimistic about the future. This young artist demonstrates a high level of technical skill and chromatic acuity that evokes, above all, a zeal for the limitless, restorative possibilities of a world that embraces curative spaces.