Bio
Ronise Doss is an artist based in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. She specializes in mixed media, printmaking, graphic design, fiber arts, and creative direction. While Doss is a professionally trained artist, she utilizes innovative processes to create conceptual works that can be explored literally and metaphorically. Doss uses bright colors, texture, text, photography, and everyday items to create a world that is majestic, raw, and preserves the rich culture and lives of disenfranchised communities. Her work is unapologetically loud and liberating in a world that tries to silence Black women. Growing up she would paint on clothes and shoes, but those talents later blossomed into her career as a printmaker and creative director. While at Occidental College, where she studied Visual Arts and Black Studies, she created and curated for a variety of group exhibitions. One of which, (“Black Girl Magic'') was showcased in Weingart Gallery. After graduating in 2020 with an extensive portfolio of custom prints and fashion designs centering the liberation of marginalized groups, specifically Black people, she continued her focus on art at UCLA’s Graduate School for Education. This catalyzed her role as an arts educator that pedagogically focuses on self expression, empowerment, and inclusivity through digital media, drawing, collaging, and history. Her international art residencies alongside post graduate opportunities strengthened her artistry and skills through workshops, galleries, and events. In addition to artmaking, she has worked as a gallery assistant for Château Shatto during the summer of 2022 in Los Angeles. In 2023, Doss presented a collection of artworks at Columbia College in Chicago for her “Homecoming” exhibition. Her recent project “The Auntie Show” honors the iconic cultural productions of Black women’s fashion and beauty as radical representations of autonomy and creative experimentation that contribute to their felicity and confidence. Currently, in addition to studying for her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she continues to create mixed media works, prints, and other commissions.
Artist Statement
As a Black woman living in America, I am disheartened by the underrepresentation and harm plaguing Black folks historically and presently. With this awareness, I turned to art to express my rage towards systemic racism and to bask in my love for Black people. In recent years I have created art with the objective of sharing raw representations of beauty and the truths of the Black experience. I explore issues of race, class, gender, and pop culture through my creative vision as a storyteller, mixed media artist, and printmaker. My artmaking process begins with research steeped in community. I use photographs, readings, documentaries, and personal narratives to inform my creativity. Blackness is not a monolith of pain, therefore my materials, medium, and subject matter are as diverse as that truth. My art is simultaneously honest about the Black experience while emphasizing the importance of Black joy and celebration. The diversity of my materials give clarity and depth to the stories I tell. Whether transforming old photos into adorned works or merging notebook paper onto a baby walker, I make candid experiences shimmer with visions of hope. This conceptual juxtaposition in my art is a testament to the duality of Black people as multifaceted individuals that maintain well-being in the midst of oppression. In my projects, I relate the experiences of underrepresented communities to society at large to cultivate a balance of critical thinking and celebration of culture.