Bio
Abreale Hopkins is a Brooklyn based Abstract oil painter hailing from Bethesda, Maryland. Her process is guided by material, Afro-Futurism and queerness. They received their BFA from the University of Virginia, where their interdisciplinary studies in the Distinguished Majors Program focused on painting and African American Studies. After graduating she expanded her experiences in arts administration as a Curatorial Intern at Studio Museum Harlem and Gallery Assistant at Black Wall Street Gallery and Cindy Rucker Gallery. Abreale's work has been featured in multiple group shows during their career, most notably Their World As Big As They Made It: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance Special Collections at the University of Virginia, and the Bronx River Arts Center as a part of the Chaos Theory: The Spectrum of Black Abstraction exhibition. She will attend the Rondo Arts Residency this fall to develop a new body of work focused on paintings as objects, the abject, and manipulating form.
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EDUCATION
The University of Virginia, BA Studio Art--Highest Distinction, BA African American Studies, Architecture Minor
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Soft Weapons: Keep Your F*cking Hands Off My Body, Brooklyn, NY 2025 Afterglow: Queer Rhythms of the Night, Brooklyn, NY
2024 Chaos Theory, All Street Gallery and Bronx River Arts Center, New York City, NY 2024 Pride All Day, Everyday, Arts Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY 2024 The Neighborhood Exhibition Washington DC 2023 Their World As Big As They Made It: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance Special Collections at the University of Virginia 2022 Thesis Exhibition, Ruffin Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia 2021 Cluster of Healing: Learning From our Neighbors, Bridge Gallery Charlottesville VA 2021 Unripe Fruits of Our Labor, Ruffin Hall, Charlottesville VirginiaRESIDENCIES
2025 Rondo Residency Mexico City, Mexico
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2023-25 Gallery Associate, Cindy Rucker Gallery 2024 Studio Assistant to Kandis Williams 2023 Gallery Assistant and Programming Assistant, Black Wall Street Gallery 2022 Curatorial Intern, Studio Museum Harlem 2021 Artist Intern, Visible Records 2021 Curatorial Intern, Chroma Gallery
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Item descriptionInspired by Black Existentialism, Afro-Futurism, and queerness, my work is the material depiction of existing in a liminal state of unknowing. Black Existentialism provides a philosophical framework to understand that despite the violence of Anti-Blackness, Black folks experience an abundance of life. It shows us how the periphery is an unbelievably generative place for life, creativity, love, and exploration. My work is created out of an embrace of that periphery; it abstracts the fear, intimacy, uncertainty, ecstasy, discomfort, and more that is entangled with the lived experience of being “othered”. This results in pieces that are guided by the physicality of my hand, the painting as a structure and gesture to the body, the material, and how each of these come together to create a piece that is more than a ‘resolved’ image. The rejection of easy interpretation invites myself and the viewer to explore our imaginations and negotiate our perceived realities. I am interested in how ‘paintings’ occupy space, how they bend, contort and physically interact with the viewer via residues of process and somatic motion. Even for the paintings that occupy more pictorial traditions, the treatment of surface and material still points towards sculpture and physical space. In some ways, it is a representation of my own body, how it has to move, think, and embrace discomfort.