Dara Etienne

Artist Statement

My practice is provisional and driven by discarded goods. Acting as a repairman, I dress, mend, or reimagine abandoned materials for a second life. I utilize objects I find on sidewalks, source offcuts from local quilters, and gather scrap metal from construction sites. Availability informs my work due to my identity as a craftsperson and artist. Much of fine art is hidden behind institutional, financial, and material barriers but craft-- especially fibers-- is expansive and widely available to working class people. As a Black genderfluid maker, I am fascinated in crafts’ rich history in labor, race, and gender. I operate where these forces rub against each other. My work focuses on contrasting hard and soft forms to emphasize the queer kinship between materials with different functions and future lives.