With You Darling, All the Time invites us to question – Who is looking at whom?

What do you see when you see two black children? Two black figures, doing nothing, triggering nostalgia for a ‘simpler time’, a ‘better time’, an ‘innocent time’.

Through ceramic sculpture and textiles, artist Sequoia Danielle Barnes invites us to unpack the framing of anti-blackness as cute or kitsch and how these ideologies become objects that propagandise a sinister yearning for the other.

This body of work misrecognises cuteness as grotesque. It asks, ‘Are we sweet enough for you?’ as black childhood has always been historically and socially positioned as grotesque if not dangerous, if not non-existent altogether. With You Darling asks who gets to be innocent under white supremacy. It explores inherent biases and perceptions of blackness.

– Sequoia Danielle Barnes

Artist Bio Sequoia Danielle Barnes is an African American artist and theorist living and working in Edinburgh since 2017.

Using ceramic sculpture, quilting, stitching/embroidery, soft sculpture, and illustration, Barnes’ practice engages in the semiotic and material deconstruction of black representation. Her practice invites scrutiny of racist stereotyping. Her work problematises the intersections of cuteness, oppression, grotesqueness, and exposes the insidious weaving of anti-blackness into the fabric of visual culture and nostalgia. Through a blend of Afro-surrealism, materiality, and narrative, her work serves as a reminder of the uncomfortable truths that cuteness cannot completely mask.

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