ROY presents: Britny Wainwright

Similar Familiar

Uncomfortable with decoration being excluded as a medium of power,

I employ vegetal pattern to rewrite modernism’s hierarchy.

I am an unsatisfied accomplice.

I stitch and construct to share the stories of my foremothers and myself. Working between ceramics and fiber I generate objects almost suited for domestic space: a quilt that provides no warmth, a pillow that doesn’t comfort. I borrow and digest textiles, wallpaper, gardens and women’s bodies to develop my own alphabet of repetitive marks. Through a personal and political lens I participate in a dialogue with art, craft, and feminism. I advocate for decoration as a medium of power.

My most recent work explores the boundary between domestic life and abstraction. I consider not only ornamental patterns in my work, but the blurring of reality during quarantine and the absurd mis-performance of the things I make. The processes I do on a daily basis: folding the laundry, closing the blinds, and wrapping myself in a blanket bring me resentful comfort and slip into my work. There is anger in my waiting.

ROY Asks

What is your name and preferred pronouns?

Britny Wainwright, pronouns: she/her/hers

How has art (whether it be your own or art in general) changed you?

Art, or perhaps an art training, has changed the way I digest the world around me. I used to think that creativity was something that was uncontrollable, a kind of luck. I now believe that making art, or even viewing other people’s work, is a practice. It is a muscle that grows strong with repetition and is aided by the awareness of the world around us, and our curiosity. Being an artist has left me with an appreciation of careful observation.

How did you start your artistic practice?

I have always been fascinated making things. But it wasn’t until college that I had even a clue as to what art making was all about and was much later when I began to find my own voice in my work.

When a first-time viewer sees your work, what is the first word that your hope they think when looking at your work? 

It is important to me is that my work is both welcoming and a little emotionally confusing to the viewer. I use color and recognizable references to invite: a hanger, a pillow, a flower. However, there is a sense of absurdity and alienation in the way things are paired or presented: a pillow full of sand, fragile ceramic studding a limp blanket. I prefer not to assign a particular “first word” to the work, but rather a feeling of being unsettled.