Dana King is a classical figurative sculptor who creates public monuments of Black Bodies in Bronze. She studies the strength and resilience of African descendants and create pieces made of clay with her hands that are then cast in bronze.
King prefers sculptures because they inhabit space and space is power. She believes sculpture provides an opportunity to shape culturally significant memories that determine how African descendants are publicly held and remembered.
Research is fundamental to her work. When digging for threads to weave together stories of the past, there are historically generalized and racist ideologies that demand a wholesale upheaval of the normative misrepresentation of the emotional and physical sacrifices of Black peoples. African descendants deserve public monuments of truth that radiate their powerful and undying resilience created from a Black aesthetic point of view.
King’s sculptures link generations by revealing common threads: shared values, experiences, and aspirations. She knows they help those alive today compare and contrast their world with that of social pioneers, both enslaved and free, whose courage and commitment to excellence helped create a modern society. Dana King creates memories, hoping you see yourself and those you love in her work.
Trees have the capacity to feed and care for other trees, even those of different species. They protect themselves and those nearby from insect infestation. They feast on carbon dioxide and in return, oxygenate the air. Towering and ever watchful, they speak to one another and hold secrets.
There are trees on plantations where enslaved people were confined, their roots fed from the soil where the dead were buried. The trees are still standing there, swaying, remembering the losses. They continue to bear witness while creating life, seed after seed, scattered by the wind.
There were countless babies born on those plantations, who, over the centuries, were snatched and sold from a tenderness they were never allowed to enjoy. They grew up not knowing their stories, cut off from their past, their history, their connections. The mothers who birthed them had to watch their babies as they were scattered by the wind.
Trees never forget.
