Artist Talk: DeJeonge Reese & Irvin Weathersby Jr. in conversation

DeJeonge Reese (she/her) is a multidisciplinary visual artist and educator from Yeadon, Pennsylvania, whose work uses material exploration to tell stories rooted in Black history, ancestry, and identity. Working across mixed media, textiles, sculpture, installation, and performance, Reese creates narratives that honor inherited knowledge, lived experience, and ancestral labor. She holds degrees from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania and Moore College of Art and Design.

Her practice is grounded in historical and ancestral research alongside personal experience, often bridging past and present through archival materials, oral histories, and family research. Black hair is a central material, combined with burlap, fabric, found objects, and handmade structures to tell layered stories of migration, labor, care, survival, and identity.

Reese’s work blends personal and collective Black histories to challenge dominant representations and reclaim authorship over Black identity. She has exhibited in Philadelphia, New York, and beyond and is a 2023 Mural Arts Philadelphia Black Artist Fellow and the current Fibers/Textile Coordinator for Arrowmont’s Spring Pentaculum.

An educator since 2016, Reese teaches at Lincoln University, inspiring students to engage with art deeply while using her practice to honor ancestry and preserve memory.

Irvin Weathersby Jr. is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of The New School (MFA), Morgan State University (MA), and Morehouse College (BA). He has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.

Originally published at raceandresilience.nd.edu.