the beauty she gave us
July 5 - 27, 2025
The Beauty She Gave Us, a solo exhibition of mixed media heirloom textiles on paper examines beauty in historical landscapes..
The International Arts & Artists
Hillyer Gallery, Washington, DC
darlene r. Taylor: heirlooms (April-July 2024)
As solo exhibition artist at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, the absences in the archive inspired silhouettes in collage of Black life, Black love, and Black family. HEIRLOOMS Academy Art Museum, Easton, Maryland April 5 - July 14, 2024.
legacy: civil rights at 60 (January-February 2024)
The DC Commission on Arts and Humanities celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act with art from DC artists that expressed the meaning of that landmark legislation. January - February, 2024.
heirlooms from behind her gaze (September 2023)
Behind Her Gaze, an inquiry into memory and remembering. Collecting, preserving, and building a narrative archive of the interior lives of ancestor mothers from archive photographs.
Remember the Names of Slaves and The Children of Slaves Remember
Behind Her Gaze
The historic New African Church building, Washington, DC
September 2023
COLUMBUS MUSEUM OF ART JULY 2022
In Behind Her Gaze at the Columbus Museum of Art, Taylor begins her examination of porch-talk storytelling that responds to historical omissions. She creates visual prose poetry on textured papers in a multidisciplinary form of narrative that assembles a critical counter-archive. The panels feature intergenerational re-membering from the unspoken interiors of Black women and girls and Black life.
The panels form a visual story of memories and tellings beginning with ingredients for a recipe and ending with a tribute to Fannie, a foremother who was likely enslaved. The stories are drawn from notes on fragments, ephemeral artifacts, and archival research as the writer (re)imagines biography of Black women public history neglects.
The collective works expand the written narrative from Taylor’s prose poem “Blood on a Blackberry.”
