Kim Dacres
Spoil Your Nose Spite Your Face aka Cutty, 24 x 13 x13", 2020
A smaller version of a potential future public art piece. A sphinx like structure with straight-back braids. The title nods to a Jamaican/British colonial idiom meant to teach us a lesson about proportional sacrifice.
Untitled (Rude One), Auto tires, bicycle tires, wood, screws, spray paint , 21 x 14 x 14", 2020
For black adolescent girls everywhere trying to figure out inner confidence, wisdom, strength, and beauty in spite of circumstance.
About the Artist
Kim Dacres is a Jamaican-American artist and educator from the Bronx, who lives and practices her studio work in Harlem. She approaches her work with enthusiasm for life and accountability for the stories of everyday people of color. Her work explores themes of pride, resistance, and silence through the combination and manipulation of tires inspired by intimate narratives.
Call to Action
I use tires and other found objects because they represent connected commerce and a hardworking aesthetic of being used, repaired, reused, and then discarded. By combining my intersectional voice with adaptive reuse of materials, I'm investigating how black women and people of color can change the work to be a softer place; to broaden the perceptions of presence in public space; and the idea of who is deserving of honorifics and monuments.
I create sculptures that speak to the presence of black bodies and cultural identifiers in relation to social and physical environments and the underlying knowledge gained from these experiences. I make it personal through using muses inspired by hairstyles and people in my communities. Turning the rawness of the rubber tires and tubes into expressive portraits of black people dually reminds us that black lives matter and that climate change impacts everyone.
The color, strength, and free abundance of the materials that I use - discarded auto tires and tubes - are strong motivators for my practice. The found and recycled objects enhance a particular piece and usurp single-use attitudes towards these materials. My practice showcases a sustainable way of producing and consuming art by reusing, rebuilding, or utilizing the resources we have around us.