Layo Bright

Artist Statement

I am a sculptor and visual artist creating hybrid works that examine migration, feminism, collective imagination and the formation of identity. Grounded in personal family archives and the collective experiences, my practice considers how materials carry memory, politics, and cultural meaning. My work draws from West African histories, Black cultural aesthetics, patterns, and designs. These elements operate as visual languages and act as markers of kinship, resilience, and survival, while also tracing broader global histories of displacement, and diaspora. Through material choices I consider the lived experience, movement and presence of Black people navigating space internally, externally and psychologically. Glass is a medium recurrent in my recent work because of its duality. It is fragile yet resilient, fluid yet fixed. Using blown, fused, broken and cast glass, I create sculptural forms that I execute through hands-on fabrication, layering research, memory, and material specificity. My practice seeks to honor collective histories while holding space for beauty, tension, and becoming.