Vickie Pierre
Multi Media
Artist Statement
My work is informed and inspired by memory, popular culture, surrealism and the decorative and ornamental arts. This inspiration has manifested itself in years of collecting a myriad of materials that suggests a sense of beauty, design and the natural world.
My practice includes various techniques and materials. Often times the materials that I employ are vintage, mass-produced objects (including Avon perfume bottles and Syroco decorative wall art) that serve as muses for my two-dimensional works such as paintings, drawings and collages or as integral elements within my assemblages and installations. With the guidance of these appropriated source materials, my continued focus is on the exploration of self-identity, with references to my Haitian culture and mythology, while concurrently considering feminine tropes and historic and contemporary cultural politics.
The combination of these re-contextualized objects along with the titles and texts, stemming from song lyrics, constructs a narrative that continues the inner dialogue of identity and socialization. Alternately, the compositions of the assemblages and paper works allude to biological and botanical structures, while maintaining base aesthetic sentiments of femininity, beauty, romanticism and sensuality.
When my work is observed, my hope is that the public will initially be drawn in by the playful whimsy of the "characters" and design elements. However, in engaging further with the work, I would like viewers to contemplate their own experiences with culturally loaded imagery or objects and consider how that may influence their understanding of identity formation and identity politics in the broader culture.
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