My artistic research delves into movement, transformation, and identity through hybrid traditional textiles and influential materials. Through material explorations fiber and fabric sculpting, patina, traditional dyeing, and weaving, I challenge the monotony and create a meaningful aftermath of the known two-dimensional material that summarizes my experiences of living in the West.
In my work, I am inspired by the feminine bodies, landscapes, maps, body movement, fashion trends, and my connection with non-conventional textile materials such as copper, Swarovski stones, rigilene, and glass beads. These multicultural materials inform my background and identity whiles delving into re-discovery and transformation of who I am becoming. They also communicate my malleable existence in new spaces, contrasting visual representations of resilience, beauty, and evoke unique emotions encapsulated by the viewer.
My background in fashion design has enabled me to consider the wall as a mannequin on which I drape these undulating tenacious sculptural forms. By allowing the folds surprise me in various ways, I capture memories through the forms I make. This sculpting process through many years, connect viewers to metaphors of movement, restriction, constraint, metamorphosis, and concealment. I sew to metaphorically emphasize community reliance while leading emphasizes interdependency and weaving illustrates the spirit of continuity.
In my current series of fabric sculptures, I sculpt rigilene – a combination of several monofilaments in groups of 6 laced together to represent a stiff structure inserted through channels of under bust couture garments – with pigmented canvas, mesh, glass beads, and bias to question culture reclamation, identity, beauty, and transformation of personalities. In other series, the medium and layering, form maps and galaxies of change and evolvement of life complexities illustrated through beadwork. The materials form political debates as they are made in Europe, Asia, and America, imported into Africa and influence the cultural dress-code and social status of the wearer. This symbolic global trade has sparked rage among the older and new generations post- colonization. My primary pursuit is to utilize these materials in synchronous ways of educating, celebrating, and recording memories as I experience them.
BEATRICE OPOKUA ATENCAH 