“My forever home and North Star, this is for East Saint Louis, Illinois,” reads the text Allena Brazier wrote next to her piece “Back Home and Across tha River”. “My forever home and North Star, this is for East Saint Louis, Illinois. A portrait of endless possibilities and truths. I’ve seen many weather tha storm with you. Traveling 89 blocks and then crossed tha river just to talk about you. I started with you long ago and now it is my deepest honor to go back home and across the river.”
Brazier’s piece is on display at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum until July 24.
The exhibition shows the scene of a basketball court with a basketball goal from Brazier’s home, a handmade court created with asphalt bound by railroad ties and sand bags. Brazier calls her installation “a hopeful ritual that invites play and wonder despite adversity.”
“I describe it as a geographical family and self portrait,” she said. “I’m really interested in analyzing the choices my ancestors made and how that led me to East St. Louis and getting my masters. Everything is aligned with one another.”
She attached photos of her family from both of her parents’ sides to the railroad ties on the asphalt.
“This displays fun and joy within the family scene,and the generational choices that led me to be here while also celebrating the city,” she said.
Brazier’s father outlined their family home with railroad ties. Over the years family and friends have played on those ties. In the installation she turned the ties vertically standing up as opposed to laying them down.
“The railroad ties connect to a sense of movement because of East St. Louis depicting a geographical scene,” she said. “A lot of railroads and the system of railroads outline the city they’re just woven within. I wanted to show that as well.”
The basketball goal represents play and Brazier depicts it as a sense of safety.
“The basketball goal was used to depict play and I use it as a form of safety.
“What does it mean to play or even have the space physically to play,” she said. “Also, mentally to have this aspect of joy or play as you grow up and you have adversity, how do you implement play for yourself?”
Growing up, basketball was also a core memory for Brazier. It was a major sport and one the community played outside often. Where you normally see a free throw line on the court she wrote the word red line to represent how that system is parallel to playing basketball.
“When you play basketball and a foul is called on you get free throws, but if you cross that free throw line those points don’t count,” she said. “I like to parallel playing basketball with life.”
The title of Brazier’s exhibition is poetic for her because her paternal grandfather was a child in the East St. Louis Race Riot in 1917.
“A lot of people from East St. Louis fled to St. Louis for safety, that’s a part of my work safety,” she said. “His [my grandfather’s] family ended up staying in St. Louis, but they moved back to East St. Louis, that’s part of generational choices.”
Brazier is an alumna of East St. Louis Senior High School. She has a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree with a minor in art history from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. She just received her Masters of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis.
