Abreale hails from Bethesda, Maryland and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from the University of Virginia. Her interdisciplinary studies were based in African American Studies, Philosophy, and Painting. Her  work revolves around how ‘paintings’ occupy space, how they bend, contort and physically interact with the viewer via residues of process and somatic motion. This approach to making has blossomed from a desire to sit within the discomfort of being ‘unresolved’. The uncertainty that lies between the ‘start’ and ‘completion’ is an incredibly generative place to inhabit. Abstraction provides the freedom to play in this ‘space’ defined by imagination. Abreale’s embrace of uncertainty invites research, experimentation, and introspection into all that she creates.

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.