Diana Baird N'Diaye
artist/folklorist/curator
I create art in the form of jewelry, quilts, sculptures, installation, and performance, that engages viewers in conversations about peacemaking, identity, heritage, healing and transformation.
I am a maker and a mender. As a maker, I seek to create work that that stimulates conversations and reflections regarding issues of identity, heritage, peacemaking, healing, and social justice. My art is shaped by my identities, as a citizen of global Africa and 2nd generation transnational. My research and travels in Africa, Europe, and Asia as a curator, anthropologist and needle worker have also informed my practice. My first and primary medium has been textiles—quilted, felted, and otherwise shaped and embellished, but site-specific performance and interactive artmaking is increasingly a part of my work. As a mender, I patch, darn, reassemble, and embellish textiles and clothing to refashion new things out of clothing with a history. My mending work is also related to concepts of healing and self-healing on the part of individuals, relationships, society. I find inspiration for the material aspects and the social context of my art practice in traditions of piecing, including African American patchwork quilting, Surinamese Maroon men’s wrappers, the clothing of Senegalese sufis, Japanese boro and European household needlework.
2020 - 2021 radical tradition: american quilts and social change” Toledo art museum, ohio
Quilt: “So Many Twin Towers”
2019 NYC JEWELRY WEEK, brooklyn metalworks
Neckpiece, Anonymous Brooklyn 2019
2018, “reparations”, RED Dirt, MT. Rainier, MD
Installation and Performance, of Mending Blind
2017 Smithsonian artists at work 2015, dillon s. ripley center, washington, dc
Sculpture, These Clothes Have Done Their Duty juried show
2017, Create/change, HIllyer gallery, WASHINGTON, DC
Neckpiece, Stay Woke!
2016, ARTISTS OF THE CREATIVE CORRIDOR, MaRBORO GALLERY, UPPER MARBORO, MD
Multimedia textile wall relief,
2015, artists at work 2015, Smithsonian, dillon s. ripley center, washington, dc
Neckpiece, Diakassé , juried show
2015 prince georges sampler 2015, gateway art center, BRENTWOOD, MD
Neckpiece, Cowries from collection selected for juried show
Neckpiece from Primordial collection selected for juried show
2012 Pyramid ATLANTIC, SILVER SPRING, MD
Neckpiece from Primordial collection juried show
Neckpiece from Primordial collection selected for juried show
Two works, “Baron Samedi visits his New Orleans Cousins” and “Many Twin Towers” in traveling exhibition and MSU collection.
SELECTED RESIDENCIES:
2017 – 2019, University of Glasgow, School of the Arts, Honorary Professorship
2015, Iowa State University, Interdisciplinary Non Fiction Writers Residency
2009, Michigan State University Museum, Artist in Residence
Folklife Curator, develop and lead research on expressive culture in the African world (Africa and its diasporas.); curate Folklife Festival programs and exhibitions. As cultural heritage specialist, lead policy initiatives on creative heritage economies /cultural heritage industries. Developer/ Principal Investigator, The African American Craft Initiative; 2020- Present; The Crafts of African Fashion, 2018 – 2019. The Will to Adorn: African American Dress and the Aesthetics of Identity. 2010 – 2019;
Artist Member
REd DIRT STUDIO, JULY 2012 - 2020
Artist member
New York State Council on the Arts, 1985 -1990
Program Officer, Folk Arts Division; Co-organizer, The Arts of Black Folk Conference, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture.
MUSE Community Museum, Brooklyn New York, 1980 -1985
Curator–in-Chief.
2010 - Creativity and Resistance: Maroon Cultures in the Americas, Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition (with Kenneth Bilby and Tomas Polimé)
1983-1989 - Arts of Adornment: Wearable Art From Africa and the Diaspora Traveling Exhibition, Curated/Directed at MUSE Community Museum, Brooklyn, New York:
1984 -Distorted Images: Stereotypes of African Americans in U.S. Popular Art;
1983 - An Artists' Celebration of Black Dance in America; Curated/Directed at MUSE Community Museum, Brooklyn, New York:
1981 African-American Quiltworks: A Continuing Tradition. Curated/Directed at MUSE Community Museum, Brooklyn, New York:
RECENT PRESENTATIONS:
2021: WORKSHOP Collaboration: Kazakhstan and U.S. Artists teaching (virtual)
2021 American Craft Council Craft Forum 2: PRESENTATION (virtual)
2021 PHILLIPS COLLECTION: Workshop On Amulets, Islam, And Memories. (virtual)
Union Institute Graduate School - Ph.D, 1997: Anthropology and Visual Studies (incl. studio arts); Craft School and Community-based workshops and trainings and apprenticeships