Laurel Richardson is an interdisciplinary artist from Chicago whose work aims to create connections through the subjects of ancestry, family lineage, cultural memory, and identity.
Laurel has a long history as a contemporary modern dancer and 2D painter. When she decided to attendgrad school two years ago, she wanted to expand on those pursuits. She describes experimenting with 3D installations that incorporated movement and performance by using draped fabrics.
“I’ve always had an interest in my heritage and ancestry,” shares Laurel, who started doing a deep dive into her own family lineage back to the 1800s. The stories of these women, including her own mother and grandmother, made their way into her work. In 2019, Laurel tells us, she visited Ghana for the 400-year anniversary of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and met the queen mothers of a small community. She was able to connect this experience with those of the women in her own family. She also realized “we need to hear stories about African queens,” not only because history is lacking representation of powerful Black women, but also because these stories can create pathways for other people.
“Our history reveals the past. Our reality is what we make of it and we’re not strangers with one another, because we connect with each other through so many experiences.”
After this experience, she began charting the African Diaspora as a way of deepening those connections and finding figures and people who looked like her as a point of inspiration. This was her way of creating another portal “from one space to another where you can transition from different ideas into new beginnings,” which is what her art aims to create.
The biggest thing Laurel hopes people take away from her work is “we’re not strangers with one another, because we connect with each other through so many experiences.”