Meet Ghislaine Sabiti | Interdisciplinary artist, painter, sculptor, costume designer, and flame worker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ghislaine Sabiti and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ghislaine, how does your business help the community?
My work develops projects between communities and collects fractured narratives for social change through identity. I build bridges between communities and culture. Providing opportunities to connect with other immigrant, local, national and international artists, minority, black, indigenous, people of color artists through group meetings, peer learning, exhibition. offers immigrants and BIPOC artists the opportunity to focus on their creative practice, gain support and exposure for their work, while upholding their distinct identities.wants to build relationships and partners with community,
organizationsin Brooklyn, the US and African and Caribbean diaspora.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

Ghislaine Sabiti is an interdisciplinary French/American Congolese-born artist, a painter, costume designer, sculptor, and flame worker who was raised on the outskirts of Paris, France and is now based in New York. She studied fine art at Atelier Chantier du Coq, l’Académie de la Grande Chaumière and graduated with honors in fashion design from Atelier Chardon Savard in Paris, France. She studies glass lamp-work and photo decals at Urban Glass and ceramic at Arshack. She highlights the technical form used in both African and European arts, which stress form and color. Sabiti completed a fellowship at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute Cycle
VIII, CCCADI’s Innovative Cultural Advocacy (ICA) and New York foundation of the Arts Immigrant Artist Program. Her work has been exhibited and commissioned nationally and internationally in France and the U.S. in group and solo shows including galleries and museums.

Exited about my new exhibition at Artshack Gallery The Crown of Glory, a solo show about beauty and Black hair by our spring artist in residence Ghislaine Sabiti.

Sabiti’s work often responds to particular historical narratives. Here she presents a series of ceramic sculptures of head wraps and women’s busts focused on female youth and maternity through the story of Tignon Law. This law dictated that Black women in 18th century Spanish Loui- siana wear cloth headwraps in public. In an act of resistance against this forced erasure of their identity, women of African descent instead wore the headscarf to serve as an emblem of their heritage–in Africa, headwraps are worn as a crown for special ceremonies and everyday life.

During her residency – the first time exploring clay for the artist – Sabiti worked on mixed media pieces that combine ceramics with fabric, oil, embroidery, and glass. With her own personal technique, she created complex surfaces by collaging varied elements from her Congolese heritage -such as Kuba textiles-, French upbringing, and Western art history. Her use of materials allowed her to build mesmerizing textures to which she incorporated bold and vibrant colors. The sculptures are accompanied by three of her most recent paintings, works that allude to the constant and perpetual mutation of bodies in our society. To show this, some characters are miss- ing body parts, and some other characters are stitched onto the canvas.

In this body of work, Sabiti aims to build a bridge between communities by highlighting the media’s influence on society’s definitions of beauty. By examining our own identities, she hopes to prompt social change and to empower us to find beauty in uniqueness and diversity.

As an immigrant women artist, it was challenging to start everything again in a new country and continent coming from Paris, France. I have to work hard, have courage, faith and believe in my potential, I overcame. I don’t let the fear or bias to stop me to do my work and be creative. I am very grateful to be a part and work with different art community , immigrant, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), NYFA New York foundation of the Arts and the Glass community.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Artshack Brooklyn | Artshack Gallery 1131 Bedford Ave Brooklyn

Artshack Brooklyn Ceramics
Artshack Brooklyn, New York
Artshack Brooklyn is a nonprofit ceramics studio located in Bedford- Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Artshack Brooklyn is developing accountability as an anti-racist, queer-affirming organization that celebrates the creativity of youth and honors people of all abilities.

We endeavor to fulfill our mission to make ceramic arts more accessible by providing scholarships to at least a quarter of the kids in our afterschool, holding regular free community days for local residents, offering free or subsidized ceramic classes to local low income high school students, seniors, and differently abled adults.

Services: Pottery Classes, Ceramic Classes, Pottery Painting, Adult Pottery Classes, Ceramic Painting, Kids Pottery Classes, Pottery for Kids, Ceramic Classes for Kids, Ceramic Glazing, Art Gallery, Pottery Studio, Wheel Throwing Classes, Ceramic Handbuilding Classes, Pottery Classes for Beginners

Address: 1127 & 1131 Bedford Ave. NY
Contact: 917.847.0311, info@artshackbrooklyn.org

LAByrinth Theater Company

LAByrinth Mailing Address: 50 Central Park West #5B, NY, NY 10023.

SIGNATURE THEATRE

The Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Tickets: (212) 244-7529

Urban Glass
Address: 647 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11217

Far From Home: An African Son in the Promised Land
by Brahima Diallo
Far From Home takes us on the journey of Brahima Diallo’s life in four countries on two continents.

bushwick artists collective
Bushwick Brooklyn

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

Athalie Entreprise

Since 2019, Athalie entreprise has been helping elderly people with loss of autonomy to manage their administrative documents to make their lives easier.

https://www.athalie-entreprise.com

Far From Home takes us on the journey of Brahima Diallo’s life in four countries on two continents. In vivid detail, he tells of his hopes and dreams growing up dirt-poor in Cote D’ Ivoire. At the dawn of the new millennium, he arrives in Mali to complete high school. There, a more introspective, ambitious, and reckless new young man emerges, one who loathes his living conditions and aspires for more. He daydreams of making it one day to the West—or at least to leave his ancestral home. Through hard work, he wins a state scholarship to study English in Algeria.

Artshack Gallery is a gallery space associated with the community ceramics studio, Artshack Brooklyn. The Gallery’s mission is to uplift artists who are traditionally underrepresented, such as women-identifying artists and artists of color, particularly from our surrounding community of Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.

Website: www.ghislainesabiti.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghislainesabiti/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ghislaine-sabiti-035a7457

Twitter: @ghislainesabiti

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ghislaine.sabiti/

Yelp: http://www.artshackbrooklyn.org/gallery-1

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ghislaine+sabiti

Other: http://www.artshackbrooklyn.org/gallery-1

Image Credits
Ghislaine Sabiti