Diedrick Brackens

This monograph offers an intimate and expansive introduction to the work of American textile artist Diedrick Brackens (born 1989). His practice is shaped through sustained contemplation of American history, autobiography and myth, conjuring imagined spaces where time oscillates between past and future. Drawing from a wide range of textile traditions—West African weaving, quilting from the American South and European tapestry-making—alongside literature and poetry, his figurative and abstract works build a collaged visual language that is both deeply personal and open-ended. Brackens depicts nuanced visions of Black life and identity, while also alluding to the complicated histories of labor and migration through his use of materials: cotton, tea and bleach, to name a few. Through three essays, a poem and an in-depth conversation with the artist, the book foregrounds Brackens’ meticulous process—hand-dyed cotton, deliberate weaving—and considers how his works invite sustained looking, offering textiles as sites of care, ritual and transformation.

Diedrick Brackens (born 1989) constructs intricately woven textiles that speak to the complexities of Black and queer identity in the United States. He foregrounds the loaded associations of cotton, which is enmeshed in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, and inscribes his weavings with symbolic materials and figures that probe the tangled threads of American history.
For darling divined, Brackens presents a selection of new and recent weavings. Their titles draw from poetry and literature by writers such as Essex Hemphill, a poet and activist known for openly addressing race, sexuality, the rise of HIV/AIDS and other issues affecting the queer African American community. This work was inspired by Hemphill’s poems, particularly “The Father, Son and Unholy Ghosts,” which speaks to the intricacies of familial relationships and the radical gesture of birthing one’s own identity. Brackens’ large-scale tapestries portray moments of intimacy between coupled beings, whether they be animals, lovers, relatives or friends.