THE CHAMELEON

Rashayla Marie Brown’s multimedia work turns identity into art.

JASON FOUMBERG

When I meet Rashayla Marie Brown at the Art Institute of Chicago one May afternoon, she’s clad in a trench coat, a fedora, and leopard-print pants—a getup that puts her equally undercover and on display. Brown, a interdisciplinary artist, tells me she wants to visit an early sculpture of the Buddhist deity Guanyin in the museum’s grand hall. “Some people think Buddha was really a black man,” she says. “I come here when I’m feeling frustrated, to change my energy.” The notion of identity—how we define it and where we perform it—lies at the heart of Brown’s work, which won her a grant from the prestigious 3Arts foundation in 2015. A self-described chameleon, the Pilsen artist often stars in her own photographs and videos. Wearing a variety of wigs and costumes,…

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Chicago (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2016

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