Bourda Bourda by Jonelle Austin

Bourda Bourda, Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

Jonelle Austin (b. 2003) is a practicing artist based in Brooklyn, New York from Demerara-Mahaica Guyana. She is receiving her BFA from the Cooper Union based in Manhattan, NY. She has been apart of exhibitions at the following in NYC: REM Studios Gallery (2022), Black Art Matters Pop Up (2023), “We’re Outside” Heath Gallery (2023), Black Art Collective Shows (2022, 2023), Cooper Union Black Students Union Show (2022, 2023, and 2024), Girls.com Gallery Show (2022), 25 East Gallery (2024), Brooklyn Art Haus (2024), Canada Gallery (2024), Weeksville Heritage Center “Imagining Our Future” (2024), Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research “Liberation Echoes” (2024) Bushwick Art Collective (2024). Her work is fluid and surreal, encompassing forms of portraiture of those she holds close as well as her own figure. She brings into reality a joyous portrayal of tender andraw love in its purest forms. With a focus on oil, acrylic, pastel and airbrush mediums, she renders her pieces with vibrant tonal qualities, using color blocking and wispy lines. Pulsating perspectives, and joyous fluidity takes over her surfaces. She questions sisterhood, home, love, isolation, and removal. Her consideration is to give space toher ancestors and bring to limitless life our understandings of space to exist, reflectand play. Renditions of sacred ceremony and postures associated with Obeahspirituality inspire and drive formal elements of the work.