Sanah Brown-Bowers: Bloodlines

May 24–July 14, 2024 

Gibbs Street Gallery

Sanah Brown-Bowers is a self-taught artist whose work focuses primarily on portraits of the Black American experience. She centers her nuclear family to tell stories of Black joy and nostalgic experiences from the 80’s that bind together pop art, fantasy, and her whimsical mind. Her intricately detailed acrylic and oil paintings are often displayed within family altars that she builds, which function as shadowboxes and include found artifacts related to her subjects.

Brown-Bowers’ paintings honor living relatives and legacies that have been lost through the stripping away of identity due to enslavement. She uses symbolism to restore hope to a race of people whose history has been forgotten and needs restoration and affirmation.  

About the Artist

Sanah Brown-Bowers is an interdisciplinary artist who was selected for the 2023 Infiniti Arts Collective and placed first in the 2022 McKinney Black History Art Competition, among other awards and honors. In 2020, she was selected for a solo show at the Bert Long Jr. Gallery at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.

A proud native of Queens, New York, Brown-Bowers now resides in Baltimore, Maryland, where she is working toward her MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art. 

www.sanahbrownbowers.com 

Image: Sanah Brown-Bowers, Mama Bear, 2022