Simone Elizabeth Saunders: u•n•i•t•y

Simone Elizabeth Saunders explores personal history, Afro-diaspora, and Black sisterhood through bold and colourful textiles.

Borrowing motifs and iconography from her Jamaican heritage, art history, literature, music and current events, Simone Elizabeth Saunders (BFA '20, Fibre) creates tufted portraits of singular figures, each a montage of powerful, inspirational Black bodies that collectively surface a strong and resilient community.

Her works reconsider iconic figures and gestures in a contemporary light, including Star Gaze, in which a confident young woman reclines in her Black Lives Matter T-shirt. Four Queens, recalling Alphonse Mucha’s Art Nouveau work Precious Stones, reveals commanding women who pose seductively and defiantly above calls for Black Love, Black Dreams, Black Magic and Black Love.  This unabashed presence is common throughout all her works, at once challenging the viewer and demanding to be heard. 

Saunders further amplifies her subjects with dynamic backgrounds that often employ feminist expressions from moons and circular motifs to blossoming flowers suggesting cycles and connections to nature.  Totems are frequently included – predatory animals such as jaguars, leopards and snakes become emblems of strength and grace.  And yet, her works manifest a compelling tension between the powerful connotations of her imagery and colour palette with the soft tactility of her material.  Hand tufting her works, threads of acrylic, wool, velvet and more, introduce a tender dimension – a sensitive, vulnerable and enticing facet that dulls the misperception of Black women as hard and angry.  Furthermore, the mingling of individual threads of yarn brought together into collective whole echoes the interconnectedness of her subjects.  As much as these powerful portraits connote Black joy and resilience, it is how they are woven together into narratives of connection that, for Saunders, offers herself and others a potent sense of belonging.

Curated by: Ryan Doherty