American, 1968 - 2023
Radcliffe Bailey was a painter, sculptor, and mixed media artist who utilized the layering of imagery, culturally resonant materials, and text to explore themes of ancestry, race, migration, and collective memory. His work often incorporated found materials and objects from his past into textured compositions, including traditional African sculpture, tintypes of his family members, ships, train tracks, and Georgia red clay. The cultural significance and rhythmic properties of music were also important influences that can be seen throughout his oeuvre.
Individual experience served as a departure point in Bailey’s quest to excavate the collective consciousness of African diasporas and regional American identities. Found objects and imagery presented seemingly bygone pasts as contemporary, neon Northern Stars that lead us through Bailey’s constellation of works, exploring and interweaving our shared histories. Often quilt-like in aesthetic, his practice created links between diasporic histories and potential futures.
Bailey was born in 1968 in Bridgetown, NJ and lived and worked in Atlanta, GA.
Individual experience served as a departure point in Bailey’s quest to excavate the collective consciousness of African diasporas and regional American identities. Found objects and imagery presented seemingly bygone pasts as contemporary, neon Northern Stars that lead us through Bailey’s constellation of works, exploring and interweaving our shared histories. Often quilt-like in aesthetic, his practice created links between diasporic histories and potential futures.
Bailey was born in 1968 in Bridgetown, NJ and lived and worked in Atlanta, GA.
