Tameka Norris

Tameka Norris’ work is about finding self-identity, not only in herself but in others as well, by using painting, video, photography, music, performance, installation, project-based art, the Internet and institutional critique. She navigates the treacherous terrain surrounding women of color in today’s world. Her practice critiques the invisibility of blackness in cultural forms built upon appropriation of popular and sacred black expressions and idioms. As an artist, Norris pulled from her own experiences and being a woman of color in order to address the larger legal and ethical ramifications of maintaining ownership of one’s own self in the face of extermination.

 

Tameka Norris received an undergraduate degree from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in Los Angeles before graduating in 2012 with an MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT. Norris has had solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA; Ronchini Gallery, London, UK; David Shelton Gallery, Houston, TX; and the 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA. Her work has been included in several group exhibitions including Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC; The Articulated Void in New York, NY; and Museum of Contemporary Diasporian Arts, New York, NY. She is Teaching Assistant of Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.

 

 

Tameka Norris; Lexican Series 1, 2013; mixed media; 12 x 12 in. each
Tameka Norris; Lexican Series 2, 2013; mixed media; 12 x 12 in. each
Tameka Norris; The Many Faces of Meka Jean, 2013; digital prints on Dibond; 5 x 9 in. each
Tameka Norris; Purple Painting, 2011; single-channel video with sound; 3:31 min
Tameka Norris; Wash N Dry, 2015; digital print; 8 x 13 1/2 in