Work samples
About Bria
Bria Sterling-Wilson is a photographer and collage artist from Baltimore, Maryland. Sterling-Wilson is profound in expressing the beauty and complexities of the African American community.
"Through the utilization of magazine clippings, newspaper, and fabric I am recontextualizing found materials to confront how the African American man and woman is represented and perceived in society. In these works, I present individuals juxtaposed with contrasting hair, facial features… more
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Home (Handle With Care)
In Sterling-Wilson’s solo exhibition Home (Handle with Care), she explores the idea of “home” beyond a roof and four walls. Instead, she examines how any environment can provide a domicile feeling of home. Through her mixed-media collages, she contrasts the feelings of comfort and sustainability with the repercussions of destruction and/or invasion.
This exhibition visually articulates stunning scenes of the Black experience through layers of found imagery. Sterling-Wilson’s visceral fragmented compositions allow for her to express the complexities prevalent in the black culture and society. Home (Handle with Care) reveals the beauty in the mundane and confronts the challenges that Black America has faced in the past and in present day.
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Joan PoncellaCollage,20x30, 2022
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La Salle de SejourCollage, 11x15, 2022
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BoudoirCollage, 20x30, 2022
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Slow BurnCollage, 20x24, 2022
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Cream and Sugar?Collage, 5x7, 2022
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Around The Way GirlCollage, 13x9, 2022
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CookoutCollage, 20x24, 2022
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I Got The City On My BackCollage, 9.25x 10.75, 2022
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Corner StoreCollage, 12x15, 2022
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Rear Window
Behind Closed Doors
Continuing my explorations of the concept of home, I build upon this idea by constructing domestic interior settings that unrobes our performative nature presented to society and exposes the intimate and private moments that occur behind closed doors. In this exhibition I present jarring juxtapositions, commanding portraits, and sumptuous scenes of spliced reality. Extracting components from family photo albums, vintage magazines, and found imagery the seamless fragmented layers delve into themes of gender roles, representation, sexuality, identity, relationships, and racism through the artistic medium of collage. Behind closed doors entangles viewers in a seductive web of self-examination begging to ask the question who are we when no one is watching?
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If Looks Could Kill #1Collage, 25x30, 2022
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If Looks Could Kill #2Collage, 25x30, 2022
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If Looks Could Kill #3Collage, 25x30, 2022
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Sticks and StonesCollage, 7x10, 2022
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Let It BurnCollage, 9x15, 2022
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Smoke SignalsCollage, 9x15, 2022
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Wifey MaterialCollage, 12x15, 2022
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Close The BlindsCollage, 13x9, 2022
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Mirror Mirror (Who's The Baddest Of Them All)Collage, 12x8, 2022
Bountiful
The collage artworks in Bountiful bring together seductive scenes of abundance and adornments. These tantalizing displays are full of allurements such as diamonds, extravagant clothes, and decor that feed our society’s ever-present unhealthy relationship to materialism. These items, juxtaposed with the Black female body, adds an element of objectivity and the transactional nature in which Black women’s bodies have been viewed through history.
With each image, Sterling-Wilson has constructed a setting that showcases women in commanding postures accompanied by desirable items. Through these works, she has given herself permission to embrace these ornaments and use them as objects of power. By looking beyond their materialistic nature, the items operate as a metaphor for ways in which women reclaim their power through warranted attainment.
- Curator, Thomas James
With each image, Sterling-Wilson has constructed a setting that showcases women in commanding postures accompanied by desirable items. Through these works, she has given herself permission to embrace these ornaments and use them as objects of power. By looking beyond their materialistic nature, the items operate as a metaphor for ways in which women reclaim their power through warranted attainment.
- Curator, Thomas James