Tyanna Buie

press release: On View May 4 through September 22, 2019

MMoCA Opening Friday, May 3 • 6–9 PM

Organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), Tyanna Buie: After Image is comprised of new mixed-media work by an artist becoming known for her nuanced exploration of memory. The exhibition presents the most recent iteration of Buie’s ongoing excavation of her childhood. The artist, who takes inspiration from the handful of family photographs remaining from her youth, transforms these captured moments into print-based portraits and sculptural objects. At MMoCA, she will present eight large-scale monotypes, a series of three-dimensional works both on Sintra and in porcelain, and a site-specific installation that includes a monumental screen-printed backdrop. The opening reception on Friday, May 3, 2019 from 6-9 pm will feature an artist talk at 6:30 pm. As a part of Gallery Night, this event will be free to attend.

“Buie’s artistic practice reveals the powerful role memory plays in how we understand the world around us,” said Leah Kolb, curator of exhibitions, MMoCA. “Even as memories shift and evolve, they nevertheless represent something essential to being human—they shape our perceptions and inform how we define ourselves.”

For Buie, art and memory are tightly intertwined. Growing up in Chicago and Milwaukee during the 1980s and 1990s, she experienced familial instability, abuse, and domestic transience. Shuffled from family member to family member, and from foster home to group home, she had few, if any, keepsakes tying her to her own history. Feeling the need for something to ground her, she started reassembling her childhood in 2016: drawing on her memories, gathering recollections from her siblings and cousins, and making digital copies of the few surviving photographs her aunt would allow her to briefly borrow. From these fragmented memories, she created a body of work that reconstitutes her past and, at the same time, restores her sense of self.

Each monotype in After Image is based on an original snapshot capturing a candid interaction between Buie’s family members: an uncle poses with his young sons, three generations of women sit together on the front stoop, and a little boy carefully folding his dress shirt. Like any collection of family images, some are casual instances caught on film, while others document a special occasion or holiday. The photograph behind Easter Preparation (2017), for example, shows a woman reaching out with one hand for a hot comb and styling a little girl’s hair with her other hand, as the girl looks up at the camera expectantly. However, unlike a photographic image, the artist’s rendering is not sharply focused, and the lines are not clearly articulated. Instead, the composition is mottled -- almost aqueous -- an effect Buie achieves with Caran d’Ache, a water-based wax medium that allows her to create an impressionistic print.

Like Buie’s other monotypes, Easter Preparation is suggestive, rather than precise. Although the general narratives contained in the prints are clear, specifics remain blurry. Faces, figures, and objects bleed into each other and hint not only at the slipperiness of memory, but also at the elusiveness of her past. Recently, the artist has pushed her work into a sculptural realm, giving physical dimension to her family’s collective history.

The teal blue vase in Father and Sons (2018), for instance, materializes on sturdy Sintra board, rather than delicate paper. Playing with flatness and dimension, image and object, and intangible memory versus tactile memento, Buie recreates several other domestic objects found in her prints: an antique tea kettle, an ivory-colored figurine, and a 1970s side-table. All of these objects are constructed out of Sintra and jut out slightly from the gallery walls. 

She sometimes takes her practice one step further, rendering certain pieces in ceramic. The blurry outline of the hot comb seen in Easter Preparation is also a definitively formed porcelain object.  Also on view are vintage lamps from her grandmother’s house, carefully re-created from memories and an old photograph.      

“Buie’s iterative process transforms her lost childhood and scattered family into something increasingly textured and dimensional,” Kolb said. “Through her art, Buie critically examines and pays homage to her history, physically conjuring her memories as a foundation from which to define her present and build her future.”