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New Work by Khaila Batts – Perception in Fragments: Unveiling Family through Color and Memory
Exhibition Events
Artist’s Reception
Saturday, July 12th
4:00 – 6:00 PM
Khaila Batts will speak about her work at 5:00 PM.
Sunday Arts Sunday
July 13th 1:00 – 4:00 PM
Surreal Identity Collage
Gallery visit and art-making for all ages.
Free of charge.
Images: Top: Brooklyn’s Paradise, 2024, Digital collage Right: Untitled, 2025, Digital collage
Description of the Work
The exhibition Perception in Fragments: Unveiling Family Through Color and Memory seeks to create a profound dialogue about how personal histories, collective memory, and societal forces shape our perception of space, identity, and belonging. By weaving together elements of the past and present, this exhibition explores how marginalized communities, particularly Black families, experience and navigate the complexities of identity, memory, and systemic forces. My work within this exhibition, including pieces like Brooklyn’s Paradise (2024) and an untitled piece, draws on fragmented realities to critique and reflect on the forces that shape our lived experiences. Through these works, I aim to invite viewers to reconsider their assumptions about space, race, and identity, ultimately challenging preconceived notions around Blackness and its portrayal in the public sphere. Brooklyn’s Paradise critiques the New York subway system, a space that is integral to urban life yet riddled with neglect and violence, often masked by everyday mundanity. By juxtaposing distorted figures, subway patrons, and discarded materials within a surreal landscape, this piece challenges viewers to confront the violence and alienation that pervade urban spaces, calling attention to how these issues are often ignored or normalized in society. The untitled piece centers on the intersection of religion, domestic labor, and generational teachings, offering a reflection on how these traditions, passed down through the generations, continue to influence Black identity today. Through a mix of archival imagery and color manipulation, this work explores how faith, labor, and family teachings evolve in the context of modern life, intertwining the past and present. In this way, the untitled piece delves into how historical practices and teachings continue to shape contemporary Black experiences, particularly within domestic and familial spheres.
Both works in this exhibition embody my artistic practice of reframing Black identity through color, abstraction, and inversion, which serves to disrupt racialized perceptions and offer a more nuanced understanding of Blackness. By redefining skin tones and emotional color associations, I challenge the viewer to move beyond fixed cultural narratives and engage with the radiant, complex presence of Black identity. The exhibition as a whole invites reflection on how individual histories and societal systems intersect to create our understanding of identity, space, and memory.
Artist Statement
I use visual storytelling to confront misunderstandings about my identity and community history, dismantling entrenched perceptions through manipulated color, layered materials, and expressive form. Working primarily in oil paint and acetate, I build scenes that feel both archival and futuristic—broad, modernized brushstrokes sweep across transparent layers, blending digital collage with painterly tactility. Skin tones are inverted or shifted into unnatural hues, disrupting racialized expectations and inviting viewers to see Blackness not as fixed, but as radiant, fluid, and otherworldly. My figures are suspended in dreamlike environments—gestural yet frozen—rendered in saturated palettes where serene blues veil violence and stark contrasts expose emotional weight. Their gazes pierce outward, creating a participatory exchange that humanizes and implicates the viewer. Interactive elements, such as smartphone-enabled color inversion, deepen this engagement, asking audiences to reconsider how perception is shaped by both technology and bias. Through abstraction, symbolism, and material play, my work reclaims narrative space for Black bodies, offering new ways of seeing and being.
