Rikki Byrd

Project Description The Bookshelf and the Altar This work on view compiles books and images that reflect and honor the artist's ancestors. As a fashion scholar, Rikki Byrd's work is dedicated to a lineage of Black women from the U.S. South, who have all worked with textiles–her great grandmother was a quilter, her grandmother was skilled at all types of handiwork, and her mother is a fashion designer. Although Byrd never acquired these skills, she has dedicated her research, writing, and curatorial practice to honoring these women and many other Black women whose work is pushed to the margins. Here she combines the bookshelf and the altar to reflect how her research methodology is deeply informed by connection and communication with the ancestors no longer here, as well as our elders. The main character of Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" bears the namesake of Byrd's great grandmother, Janie. Tiya Miles' "All That She Carried," reminds Byrd of the coats she inherited from her godmother's wardrobe after she passed away not long visiting New York to attend Byrds graduation from Parsons School of Design. "The Bookshelf and the Altar" connects the personal to the sometimes distance placed between the researcher, the subject, and the act of performing research. In this juxtaposition, the artist invites a reflection on intimacy, closeness, and deep introspection that is not often at the forefront of research practice. Bio Dr. Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator, and curator. She is the founder of Black Fashion Archive and the co-founder of the Fashion and Race Syllabus, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Culture Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Art and Art History. Across her writing, teaching, and curatorial projects, she focuses on Black aesthetic practices in visual culture, art history, fashion, and performance.