Black Oracles
2019
Angela Hennessy
Oakland, California
Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.
About Angela Hennessy
Angela Hennessy is an Oakland-based artist and founder of See Black Womxn. She is an Associate Professor at California College of the Arts, where she teaches courses on visual and cultural narratives of death. Through writing, studio work, and performance, her practice questions assumptions about Death and the Dead themselves. In 2015, Hennessy survived a gunshot wound while interrupting a violent assault on the street in front of her house. Her manifesto, The School of the Dead, was written in the following months of recovery. Alternating between poem, prayer, and call to action, The School of the Dead is in development as an educational program. Hennessy’s work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine, The New Yorker, and Surface Design Journal. She has had recent exhibitions at The Museum of the African Diaspora, Pt. 2 Gallery, and Southern Exposure. She is a San Francisco Artadia Award winner.
Program Participation
Joan Mitchell Fellowship, 2021
Website / Social Links
Drawing upon cross-cultural mourning practices, I use hair as a material exchanged between the living and the dead. Ephemeral and celestial forms are constructed by everyday gestures of domestic labor—washing, wrapping, stitching, weaving, brushing, and braiding.”
