Artwork Statement:

This was the first piece I made after my grandmother passed. I spent 3 years making work about connecting with her and my other late grandmother, and so much of that work was about feeling stuck in-between the dead and the living. I would sit with my living grandmother and talk about her past and mine, then sit in self-made altar spaces and talk to my late grandmother, asking for guidance for the future. Now that they're gone, it's both easier and harder to reach them. This photo is an indirect copy of one of the last images I was able to take of my maternal grandmother while she was healthy enough to want to be photographed. This is how she wanted me to remember her, and now years after her passing this is exactly how she exists in my mind - beautiful, quiet, and only partly obscured by the veil of death.

Artist Bio:

Zuri Washington (b. 1993) is a lens-based artist and professor whose work has been exhibited in galleries such as Roman Susan, Roots & Culture, and both the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection and the Special Collections at the Art Institute of Chicago. They have also shown internationally in conjunction with Tokyo University of the Arts in Tokyo, Japan. Currently they live, work, and create in Chicago, IL.