Quite a bit has changed since the St. Louis American last interviewed artist Shevare’ Perry about her “She Is Her, I Am She I & II” collection in May.
“I wanted to put the planet and galaxy within her hoop earrings and think about being in the future and the present simultaneously,” Perry said.
The conglomerate of art, including poetry, digital portraits, and mixed media collages exploring Black fashion, beauty, and womanhood, has expanded to ‘She Is Her, I Am She III,’ which includes works of Afrofuturism (combining of elements African culture and heritage with technology, science and philosophy), HeLa cells, and an NFT collection.
Perry premiered a pop-up continuation last Friday at Sophie’s Artist Lounge, which includes a street art gallery.
She extended the series because there’s still a lot to explore and unpack.
“The poem continues as we talk about ‘she and her,’” she said. “We talk about trying to find balance and who’s dominating who. What does that look like? I wanted to explore more and connect that aspect of this work with [her earlier] ‘My Adventures of Wynk’ work, thinking about where the intersection is. I wanted to expand my thought process and wondered how I could work on both at the same time instead of both individually.”
Serenity No. 1 and Joy No. 1, the newest portrait series, come from analyzing the struggles evoked from emotions.
“Joy comes from the line in my poem ‘she is her joy and grief, she laughs, she cries,’” Perry said. “There’s power in Serenity. Power in taking a stance, being still, and being poised.”
Joy displays a Black woman in a black and white print with orange planets inside her hoop earrings and a dove resting on her shoulder.
“I wanted to put the planet and galaxy within her hoop earrings and think about being in the future and the present simultaneously,” Perry said. “How do we live in this space, and what’s to come of this space? The emotions within the space stem from color, contrast, being multidimensional, and not putting limits on a physical space. This all exists, but it’s about thinking outside the physical area into a spiritual space. It’s about mindset and [the] abstract.”
She said the dove represents liberation, freedom, purity, and life.
Serenity accents a Black woman with voluminous braided afro puffs in black and white centered in a purple and pink universe, with doves on her shoulder like Joy.
“The goal of Serenity was for her to look like an African goddess and queen with her afro puffs and gold bands,” Perry said.
HeLa No. 1 and HeLa No. 2 was a curation Perry did in collaboration with The St. Louis Fashion Fund for lab coat designs.
“I created a logo design similar to how Fendi has theirs and thought about the double helix since there are HeLa cells in DNA,” Perry said. “It was screen printed onto a lab coat and auctioned off.”
Her ‘I Am Henrietta, 2021’ piece is a poem dedicated to Henrietta Lacks, telling the story of an African American woman whose cancer cells became the basis of the medically crucial HeLa cell line.
“It talks about where she’s from, what happened to her, why, and why her cells are important,” she said.
Her NFT (non-fungible token) line began after people encouraged her to place her work in that digital space.
“People were like ‘Your work looks like it should be an NFT,’” Perry said. “It took a lot for me to process, do research and understand how the work would be good in that space.”
An NFT is a digital asset bought by cryptocurrency. Every time that asset sells for a higher bid, the original artist will always receive payments.
Perry also released ‘She Is Her’ limited-edition merchandise consisting of the ‘She Is Her’ collection featuring abstract text portraits and her Moments of Freedom line.
All prints and merchandise are available for purchase at www.gallery7347.com.
Learn more about Perry here:https://www.shevareperry.com/.
