Ekua Holmes

Ekua Holmes (born in 1955) is a native of Roxbury, MA and a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). Holmes primary method of art making is mixed media collage, by layering newspaper, photos, fabric, and other materials to create colorful compositions. Many of these works evoke her childhood in Roxbury’s Washington Park neighborhood in Boston, MA.^[1] Ekua is currently working in Boston as an assistant director at the Center for Art and Community Partnerships at MassArt.

Education

Holmes has a BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.^[1]

Career

As a young artist, Holmes discovered the power of found objects, which derive their identity as art from places as well as the social histories attached to the objects. Place, identity, culture, and social justice are frequent themes in her work. Many of Ekua's collages are reminiscent of works by African and African American artists such as the late Romare Bearden and Njideka Akunyili. About her work, Holmes said, “In everything I create I hear them saying, ‘Remember Me,’ and through my work I honor their legacies by bringing them forward to life with torn and cut shapes of found colors and textures. With these scraps and remnants, assembled like a down-home quilt, I rebuild my world, putting in what speaks to my personal and cultural narrative.”^[2]

Holmes' artwork has been showcased in several exhibitions throughout the New England area, including Renewal and Regeneration (2000), at the Museum of Our National Heritage, Lexington, MA. Second Childhood (2004) was installed at the Hess Gallery of Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, MA.^[3] In 2004 the Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists acquired her collage titled “Goree,”^[2] and since then Holmes’ works have been added to the collections of the Willis Cultural Center in Worcester, MA, Boston Medical Center, Boston Arts Academy, Dana Farber Cancer Center and the Boston Children’s Hospital, as well as numerous private collections. Her 2016 exhibit, Deeply Rooted at Harvard Medical School's Transit Gallery features collages of civil rights activist/leader Fannie Lou Hamer, her grandfather, and other family members.^[4]

Holmes was the recipient of a 2013 Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation.^[5] Also in 2013, Holmes was named to the Boston Art Commission, which oversees public art projects on city property. In 2015, she installed a community-based work for an opening at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, which consisted of a gigantic interactive collage with scenes of Boston in transition, designed to complement the ICA group show, “When the Stars Begin to Fall.”^[1]

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2015, Holmes’s Google Doodle illustration honoring the civil rights leader was the featured image on Google’s U.S. homepage. The collage depicts King walking arm in arm with fellow activists in Selma, Alabama.^[1]

Holmes' "Crosswalks and Bus Stops" was installed at Northeastern University, in oversize glass windows that faced onto Parker Street and Huntington Avenue. The work was part of Northeastern’s Public Art Initiative, a platform for artists from the local community and the world.

References

External links

• Official website
• TEDxBoston 2011