Tourne

Thank you for featuring our artist, Dominique Rietzler, at Art Basel 😎
Photo credits: Sarah Frauchiger

Meet Llanor Alleyne, a Barbados-born, New York-raised mixed media artist whose work explores the transformation and transfiguration of female selfhood. Llanor Alleyne’s collages and illustrations explore metaphorical and physical inversion, often employing tearing, cutting, and layering of abstract, figurative, and floral shapes to
interrogate empathetic feminine connections to nature while alluding to emotional disruptions that teem just beyond a first or second glance. Influenced by her surroundings as well as imagined landscapes, Llanor creates abstract paintings and drawings on mylar and paper that are the basis of her collages.

Llanor’s recent work “Tea & Empathy” (photo 1, 30” x 44”) explores the impact of Type 2 Diabetes on Black women in Barbados. The mixed-media collage was commissioned for “In the Flesh: Critical Reflections on Black Women’s Experiences of Food, Embodiment, and Type 2 Diabetes,”an interdisciplinary research project spearheaded by Drs. Tonya Haynes (University of the West Indies) and Nicole Charles (University of Toronto - Mississauga) — the piece reflects both the cultural and personal dimensions of the disease. Through the use of vibrant botanicals, historical references, and figurative symbolism, the work addresses traditional healing, community support, and the emotional toll of managing diabetes.

“Three for Tea” (image 2, 30” x 22”) is part of Llanor’s “Moonlight” narrative collage series, an homage to black women at play, and in communion with each other and the natural world. “At the Shore” (image 3, 22” x 15”) is part of the related “Moonlight Blues” series, with smaller sized collages depicting moments of solace and respite in the natural world.

“Rachel” (image 3, 10” x 10”) and “Helena” (image 4, 10” x 10”) belong to Llanor’s “My Girls” collage series. These collages are part of Llanor’s ongoing practice of expanding her visual vocabulary through creation of collages with “leftover” paintings. The series was first featured in her solo exhibition “Written in the Body” at the Frame & Art Gallery in Barbados.