Malene Djenaba Barnett is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, textile designer, and community builder based in Brooklyn, New York.
Malene is interested in finding ways to define the Black narrative while raising awareness about racial inequality in America. Her artistic practice is inseparable from her work as a community builder. She shares her African Carribbean heritage with a global audience through sculptural ceramic installations and vessels, mixed media paintings, and tapestries. Barnett exhibits nationally, gives talks, and publishes work raising awareness around Caribbean makers and ceramic art traditions of the Black diaspora. She holds an MFA in Ceramics from the Tyler School of Art & Architecture and undergraduate degrees in Fashion Illustration and Textile Surface Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Malene has participated at Anderson Ranch, Watershed, Greenwich House Pottery, Judson Studios, and Haystack residencies. In addition, she is a grantee of a Fulbright to Jamaica and the founder of the Black Artists + Designers Guild, a collective of independent Black makers.
In Process
My art pays homage to my ancestors. I’m inspired by local potters, textile weavers and woodcarvers. Their dedication to both craft and purpose, keep cultural traditions alive and have created legacies that continue to drive me to push storytelling through my works in clay. My connection to clay is a spiritual one. Unlike other mediums I’ve used in the past, clay is flexible in both surface and form. My finished pieces have traces of my fingerprints and this allows you to follow the making-process.
