Amira Brown
Though born in New York, Amira Brown has resided in New Haven, Connecticut for most of her life. Brown’s parents inspired her to work and think outside of the box to achieve her goals, leading her to pursue art through self-research until she could take college art courses as a teenager. Brown received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Paier College of Art in 2016, and she has since lived and worked in New Haven.
In November 2019, Brown worked with “Create the Vote: New Haven” to produce city-wide posters encouraging voter participation. Brown was featured at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art in an exhibition dubbed Celebration of Resilience & Resistance: Divine Moment. Brown is particularly well-known for founding Bailout Gallery in June 2020, a collaboration of over forty artists to fundraise for bail funds in Connecticut, New York, and Minnesota during the surge of Black Lives Matter protests.
Of her work, Brown notes, “My work is inspired by the psychological aspects and factors that drive and liberate black consciousness and articulate their depth. Academic essays and poetry such as The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica in 59 Versos by Dionne Brand and Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde largely inspire my work. I focus on capturing the ambiguities of life, moving past the representational ideals of diversity, and moving into unresolved and imaginative aspects of blackness.”
