Alicia Henry, the US artist whose textile work delved into themes of the family, beauty, the body and identity, has died.
Faces and masks were preeminent in her work: Untitled, (13 female figures) (2019) depicts a vast, goddesslike Black female figure with a headdress of birds and a dress of traditional African textile; two silhouetted girls flank the figure. Indeed, the materials list is typical of the disparate array that went into Henry’s work: acrylic, dye, thread, charcoal, pastel, graphite, coloured pencil, yarn, cotton, rayon, linen, wool, felt, canvas, paper, wood, cardboard, nails. Meanwhile Untitled (cluster) (2019) featured a vast crowd of similarly stripped down figures, ghostly and endearing in equal measure, while Henry’s Ghanaian mask collection inspired a series of smaller fabric collages.
Henry was the subject of numerous solo shows and group exhibitions at institutions, including the the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (2022); Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2019); Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville (2016); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2012); the Nashville International Airport (2002); the Cheekwood Museum, Nashville (2000); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (1997); and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1996).
For many years Henry was a professor of art at Fisk University in Nashville, one of the oldest Black universities in the United States.
