Ric'kisha Taylor's 'Gleaming' Brings a Bit of the Floridian Swamp to Seattle

In artist Ric'kisha Taylor's "Rather live with the gators," a woman kneels in the grass, wrestling a gator.

Wearing red leopard print boots, jean cut-offs, and a silky pink shirt, her glittery acrylics contrast with the beast's scaly skin. The woman's gold grille glints from behind cherry-red lips fixed in a snarl. Her eyes are decorated with light-blue eye shadow, and blonde curls bouncing on top of her head. Here, she's less triumphing over nature than mimicking it — the gator shows us its teeth, and she shows us hers.

This piece is part of Taylor's fantastic solo show at 4Culture Gallery — Gleaming — which features fabric-based work by the Miami-raised, Seattle-based artist. A mix of multimedia works and soft sculptures, the exhibition explores Black diasporic visual culture, stereotypes, and luster.

On display is Taylor's excellent juxtaposition of color and texture, stitching Black figures onto swampy landscapes replete with gators, watermelons, snakes, grass, and gold chains. Taking inspiration from the Maroon people — descendants of enslaved Africans who freed themselves from slavery and formed their own communities — passed-down stitching techniques from Black elders, and her home state of Florida, Taylor's show is teeming with life and curiosity.

"In putting together this show, I was thinking about what it would be like to rebel in the United States without leaving and about the ways some of our ancestors did rebel," said Taylor in a recent interview. Gleaming imagines a world of rebellion, a world where people of the African diaspora removed themselves from American society and developed something of their own. "I just started to think — what would these people look like there?" reflected Taylor.

Taylor often incorporates materials like rhinestones, chains, and printed images into her works, giving them a collage-like tactile quality. She pulls from her experience growing up in Miami, where she says boys her in neighborhood owned pythons and iguanas (both invasive to Florida) as pets that also served as a fashion statement and assertion of status.

In "Lot Lizard," a woman bares her tongue and teeth — made of glitter paper — dons a gold chain, and a bright orange top with her breasts just peeking out. Set against a satin baby-blue background with pink leopard print, her hair is made of different collaged blonde wigs and she cuddles two iguanas. In "Crocodile Tears," another blonde-haired female figure cries, beaded lizards forming the basis of her tears, and in "Exotic Pet Lady" a woman looks over her shoulder at the viewer, iguanas stacked on top of one another in her hair.

For one of the show's biggest pieces, "Dancers in Paradise #2," Taylor stitched two scantily clad female figures dancing next to palm trees over bits of crushed watermelon. Their tresses — one a blonde curly blowout and the other box braids fashioned into one thick braid — are made of paper which Taylor attached to the piece with fabric glue, contrasting with the shiny, satiny texture of the fabric. It's a somewhat bawdy scene that could easily have come from a music video or a picture from a beach hang.

Throughout all the pieces in Gleaming, Taylor's irreverent-yet-calculating construction underscores the freedom her figures have in their world to eat, dance, dress, and exist however they please. Despite stereotypes or assumptions, each work asserts itself on its own terms and invites viewers to imagine a universe in which these figures actually exist. In these times of deep uncertainty, it's a welcome endeavor.

Ric'kisha Taylor's "Gleaming" is up at 4Culture Gallery until Feb. 27.