- Chandra Brooks
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Chandra Brooks (born April 18, 1972) is a contemporary African American artist who explores themes of race, gender, cultural assimilation, personal psychology, collective spirituality and identity through her work. She is best known for inventing light cuttings and her use of negative space as a pathway for light through her project The Universal Fairytale.[1]
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Chandra Brooks
Born: April 18, 1972 (age 39)
Town & Country: Missouri, USA
Nationality: American
Field: Light Cutting(s) art
Training: Parsons School of Design,
Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in Den Haag, The Netherlands
Royal Academy of Art (The Hague)
Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts AntwerpBiography
Brooks was born in Town & Country, Missouri, USA, the youngest of 6 children, to Chrysler Corporation assemblers Isaac and Cecelia Brooks. Brooks was the first member of her family to be born and raised in an all white suburban environment where she experienced a vast amount of racial violence which was primarily directed at her, a fact which shaped her career decisions and affected her entire life. Her parents desire to move from the multicultural, infamous Watts, Los Angeles neighborhood to a Chrysler Plant in the more segregated Midwest was motivated by the families having lived through the Watts Riots of 1965 and their desire to see more of the country where they might raise their children in peace. During the 1979 energy crisis the Brooks family was deeply and personally affected by constant layoffs and the threat of unemployment which continued until her father's forced early retirement due to ill health and plant closings in 1989.
Brooks parents were raised under Jim Crow Laws although they met in Los Angeles in the late 50's early 60's. Her idealized view of her father which later inspired her own moves around the United States and Western Europe were shaped by: her father's story of arriving in California as an unskilled laborer with a 4th grade education and being given a job at the Chrysler Plant because the foreman looked at him and could see that, "this jack can work" ; in addition to seeing her father develop himself during her youth; as well as moving on to get his high school equivalency; in addition to starting college in his mid-70s. Her father's stories about himself and his grandfather taught her conviction and perseverance while her mother's professional level sewing inspired her to always find her own way of doing things and that it's normal to stay up all night to be exceptional. Brooks' latter interest in storytelling and folklore came from her appreciation of her families history being shared from generation to generation via oral history.
Brooks experiences of the violence of: growing up black in Winchester, Missouri; going to all white schools; black-on-black racism directed at her via her Southern Baptist Church as well as through the inner city African-American youth who were bussed out to Ballwin Elementary, Morgan Selvidge Middle School and Lafayette High School via desegregation programs led to early experiences of dissociation and depression which caused her to begin writing in kindergarten and developing a voracious appetite for self-healing; yoga, from a stolen school library copy of Swami Vishnudevananda's The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga in addition to studying and practicing Zen Buddhism at a local center at the age of 14. At the age of 14 she became a student of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's principal cellist John Sant' Ambrogio.
By the age of 15, Brooks had begun skipping school and associating with skaters, punks and social outcasts who were incredibly accepting and encouraging towards her creativity and identity despite her growing tendency towards being shy, untalkative and increasingly introverted resulting in Brooks becoming a high school dropout in addition to becoming a runaway and street kid in New Orleans French Quarters with a boyfriend after spending some days in an abandoned monastery in Missouri before surviving some terrible experiences with: truck drivers, The Hare Krishnas and Christian fanatics while hitchhiking in the Southern States. Despite the generally harsh reality of street kids, Brooks managed to avoid drugs, alcohol and prostitution until the couple was taken in by a Nichiren Buddhist family until they were convinced to go home to Missouri. After questioning her will to live, Brooks went against her families conservative Christian beliefs regarding psychological care by insisting on being institutionalized at Hyland Adolescent Center where she received inpatient therapy as well as a new understanding of herself which allowed her to turn themes of violence and aggression in her life into art and literature. Later, Brooks attended Logos School for Gifted children and went on to study at Parsons School of Design in New York as well being a guest of the Image & Sound Department of The Netherlands Royal Academy of Art following a brief hiatus in the Monumental Architecture Department of The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.
Personal life
At the age of 21, Brooks became a mother. At 22, she married and at the age of 27 her second son was born. She and her husband ended their relationship July 4, 1999 although their painful/sometimes violent and complicated divorce was only finalized in October 2010. March 21, 2011 (The first day of Spring) Brooks married Oliver Mojen in Berlin, Germany ending more than a decade of ambiguous legal status. From 2000-2011 Brooks and her two sons lived in squats, gardens and a host of unconventional situations that allowed her the safety of community in: The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Poland, Italy, Germany and Sweden.
Philosophy
Since the age of 14, Brooks has taken initiations in several philosophies/religions: Nichiren Buddhism, Bodhisattva Vows, Transcendental Meditation as well as exploring Islam, Hinduism and the 8-fold yogic path. In 2009, she was introduced to Kabballah by Ofir Touffal. Currently, she is working on a series of light cuttings of the 42 Names of God. The role of religion, philosophy and history in her project can be exemplified in her attempt to work intensively with the precepts of the 3-Abrahamic Faiths. Brooks creates adaptations of The Universal Fairytale which respectfully showcases aniconic light cuttings to highlight their similarities by developing light cuttings that follow the injunctions against idolatry in the Abrahamic Faiths in her attempt to create cross-religious dialogues through art that focuses on the differences in each's similarities.
Influences
Her current project incorporates a range of influences including: Anaïs Nin, The Dadaists, Picasso, Greek Mythology, Lilith & The Epic of Gilgamesh, La Belle et la Bete, The Works of William Shakespeare, Lotte Reiniger, Eric Carle, Derek Jarman, Emperor Jones, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wayang Puppetry, Silat, Yurijy Nurshteyn, Old Masters Paintings, Sergei Eisenstein, and dancer/educator Tim Gulliher.
References
External links
Categories:- 1972 births
- Living people
- African American artists
- American artists
- People from Missouri
- American women
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