Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark

Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark is a UK based, self-taught, digital sculptor, writer, researcher and curator living in Central London. She was born in London in 1995 and studied at Chelsea College of Arts, where she gained an MA in Fine Art in 2018.

Following the affirmation of media, Rayvenn’s practice explores the digital hybridity of sculpture. She explores the nuances of identity that pivot between hyper-visibility and invisibility, offering (re-)imagined collective perspective. Her work chronicles the elevated reframing of black anatomy. She chronicles the reframing of black anatomy in order to open up a dialogue about the irregular and marginalised position of the black artist – turning ‘the system’ back on itself, she uses the power, influence and materials of the industry to present an alternative narrative history and perspective. She explores ‘the nuances of identity that pivot between hyper-visibility and invisibility, offering a perspective of the SOUL as a crossbreed of aesthetic references. She asks: ‘When will the black body truly escape [from] the guise of the white imagination?’

Such ideological positioning shifts the normative function of figurative practices within this mode of self-referential questioning, which engenders a self-sustaining (non-) fiction rooted in authenticity and criticality that allows audiences to break free from reference once and for all in a new form of hybrid realism.