Grace Lynne Haynes

In her practice, Grace Lynne Haynes (b.1992, California) investigates the relationship between collage and storytelling through the usage of materials such as gouache, glitter, hand-made paper, and photography to create a visual language of her own making. Haynes’ work continues the African American world making tradition that utilizes the imagination to create alternative realities that we can dream and exist in. Haynes’ process of world building becomes a zone of creative and cultural liberation by inventing new ways of being. She asks questions about who owns our future, but also who is entitled to speculate, and reckon with it. In these invented worlds, her femmes are cast as the lead to the creation of an exciting and unruly elsewhere. Their ethereal bodies exist in-between the physical and spiritual realm gifting them unique abilities that defy physical boundaries and art-historical precedents. The first chapter of this world is titled “The Sea is The Only Highway” and unfolds in the aquatic realm and the porous borders of seascapes that create new gateways for these beings to enter and simulate rapture and revision. Haynes incorporates references to Afrofuturism, ecological issues, Octavia Butler’s science fiction, and figuration to create surrealist alternative worlds that challenge Western theology and methods of image making. Her work combats the notion that our earth can be known, conquered, or grasped. Haynes embraces the feeling of yearning, whilst considering the potential for destruction to bring about new life and ways of existing.

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