Letitia Huckaby: 5 Paper Dolls: A Contemporary Tale
Letitia Huckaby’s 5 Paperdolls: A Contemporary Tale is a body of work inspired by the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. The explosion killed 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair and wounded dozens of others. The 16th Street Baptist Church served a predominantly Black congregation and functioned as a meeting place for leaders of the Civil Rights movement.
Huckaby’s use of floral motifs reference patterned flour, sugar, and cotton sacks upcycled during the Great Depression to create clothing, while her use of embroidery hoops as framing devices creates a parallel between her artistic labor and historical notions of “women’s work.”
Letitia Huckaby
LeeLee, 2020
Pigment print on fabric with vintage embroidery hoop
19 1/2h x 19w inches
Letitia Huckaby
Charisma, 2020
Pigment print on fabric with vintage embroidery hoop
27 1/2h x 19 1/2w inches
Letitia Huckaby
Tytiana, 2020
Pigment print on fabric with vintage embroidery hoop
19 1/2h x 18 3/4w inches
Letitia Huckaby
Inhaling the Universe, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage flour sack
31h x 21w inches
Letitia Huckaby
The Great Procession #4, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sack
27h x 14w inches
Letitia Huckaby
The Great Procession #3, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sack
27h x 14 1/2w inches
Letitia Huckaby
Still I Rise, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sugar sack
32 1/2h x 17 3/4w inches
Letitia Huckaby
The Great Procession #4, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sack
27h x 14w inches
Letitia Huckaby
No Peace, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sugar sack
32 1/2h x 18w inches
Letitia Huckaby
What They Thought Was Silence, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage flour sack
33h x 19w inches
Letitia Huckaby
#don’t kill my vibe, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sugar sack
33 1/2h x 18w inches
Letitia Huckaby
To Sing at Dawn, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage flour sack
25 1/2h x 12w inches
Letitia Huckaby
Paper Doll, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sugar sack
26h x 13 1/2w inches
Letitia Huckaby
Sunday Dresses: Two Little Girls, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sugar sack
16h x 7 1/2w inches
Letitia Huckaby
The Great Procession #1, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sack
28h x 14 1/2w inches
Letitia Huckaby
The Great Procession #2, 2020
Pigment print on fabric and hand stitched on vintage sugar sack
28h x 14 1/2w inches
Letitia Huckaby has a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in photography, and her Master’s degree from the University of North Texas in Denton.
Her work is featured in the exhibition Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation, organized by Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Williams College. On view during the 160th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Emancipation visualizes what freedom looks like for Black Americans today and the legacy of the Civil War in 2023 and beyond. Most recently, Letitia Huckaby was awarded 2022 Texas Artist of the Year with an exhibition of her recent work Bitter Waters Sweet at Art League Houston, along with a publication. This critical body of work explores the legacy of Africatown, the historic community near Mobile, Alabama, its West-African founders, and their descendants, along with the history of the ship that trafficked them to the States in 1860, the Clotilda. In 2020, Huckaby was a Fall 2020 Artist in Residence at ArtPace, where her she debuted And Thy Neighb(our), a series that portrays Black refugees and immigrants from across the diaspora in the vein of Old Master paintings.
Letitia Huckaby has exhibited at Phillips New York, the Tyler Museum of Art, The Studio School of Harlem, the Camden Palace Hotel in Cork City, Ireland, and the Texas Biennial at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum. Her work is included in several prestigious collections; the Library of Congress, the McNay Art Museum, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, and the Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Huckaby was a featured artist in MAP2020: The Further We Roll, The More We Gain at the Amon Carter Museum and State of the Art 2020 at The Momentary and Crystal Bridges Museum, both opened in the spring of 2020.