AfroPineapple Venus, 2023

APRIL BEY
AfroPineapple Venus, 2023
18 x 23 inches
Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Museum Etching paper
Limited edition of 25 with 5 APs
All prints signed and numbered by the artist 

Through an Afrofuturist lens, Bey reflects on subjects such as queerness, feminism, and internet culture in vibrant tableaux that combine living plants, video, music, photography, and oversized mixed-media paintings and textiles. The artist positions herself as an alien from the planet Atlantica, while her mission on Earth is to observe and report as an undercover agent. This imagined world and her general interest in storytelling come from her father, who would tell her childhood tales using alien narratives to illustrate how Black people were othered in the United States and The Bahamas. In contrast to the racial oppression and exploitation rampant on Earth, Atlantica offers a beautiful diasporic world in which Black people thrive and flourish.

Space travel is involved and expensive on Earth but on Atlantica, a spaceship isn’t the only modality of transportation. 5-7 plants of the calathea or pineapple variety grown together with high humidity and purple light will transport you between Atlantica and Earth in 30-90 seconds. Eleutheran Portal Growers from various time periods on Earth (Eleuthera, The Bahamas) tend to the AfroPineapple Venuses, which when grown can cut transportation time down to 5 seconds and leaves the traveler with moisturized pineapple-scented hair and skin.

April Bey grew up in The Bahamas (New Providence) and now resides and works in Los Angeles, CA as a visual artist and art educator. Bey’s interdisciplinary artwork is an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture, feminism, generational theory, social media, AfroFuturism, AfroSurrealism, post-colonialism Speculative futurism and Blerd culture. Bey’s two-dimensional mixed media works and installations are from her ongoing Atlantica series. Bey incorporates fur, glitter, vinyl and woven textiles—materials rich in queerness—to craft icons around the images of real-life figures from her community. Bey’s work has been exhibited by and is in the collection of The California African American Museum, The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, The Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Escalette Collection, The 21C Museum, Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA, and more. Bey is currently a tenured professor at Glendale College.

This print is part of a suite of limited edition prints by a diverse group of womxn-identifying artists commissioned on the occasion of Untitled Art Miami Beach 2023  in order to amplify the necessity and power of creativity in shaping inclusive civic discourse. These prints will benefit the artists and For Freedoms’ upcoming initiatives. 

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• Unframed prints ship within 1-3 weeks and framed prints ship within 4-6 weeks.
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