MOMENTS IN GRIEF
Moments In Grief explores the difficult emotions that come with motherhood: grief, loss, guilt, and the shifts we navigate as our bodies and identities change amidst this new, nuanced, and profound reality. These are the feelings we often suppress or run from. But what if we sat with them instead?
Think of these works as portals. Each piece is me sitting with those emotions and processing them through paint, form, and color. They're invitations to feel your feelings fully: to face yourself and have that breakdown so you can have your breakthrough.
Through non-representational form and intuitive movement, each painting encourages a conversation about the emotions that shape us as parents, and well, as humans. They act as a reminder that embracing the difficult stuff, the grief, the guilt, maybe even resentment, is how we eventually breakthrough and expand our capacity to experience, peace, acceptance, even joy. It is what’s necessary to become the best versions of ourselves and the best parents/humans we can be for the new life we've brought into the world.
Owning a piece from this collection is an act of honoring your own emotional truth.
The colors in the paintings represent how we express grief throughout the world. For example, in Western cultures such as the USA, black is often used to express grief. In Eastern cultures such as Japan and China, the color white is used, and so on. Other colors used in the work, such as the gold and the grey/green colors, represent joy, acceptance, becoming at peace with my new reality, and highlighting what is gained when becoming a parent. The red color represents the bloodshed of birthing new life. The blue color represents hope.
Since completing the collection and debuting it at various in-person markets and exhibits the past month or so, the primary symbolism and meaning behind the collection has evolved and expnaded. I’ve talked with many people, including parents who have shared stories of losing children, not being able to have children, and grief in general. These conversations further opened my eyes to how grief impacts us all in many different ways. This narrative expansion is exactly the point of this series. And it was profound to witness how my work opened up those conversations and heavily resonated with people who have experienced grief.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nailah Ali is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Minnesota. The Coping Nook, an extension of her design practice Coping Creative, is where her tangible creative ventures take form.
She crafts multi-dimensional abstract worlds that explore themes of self-discovery, nuances of human nature, vulnerability, and the general complexities surrounding the evolution of black womanhood, specifically ambitious black women who hold many roles.
Grounded in intuition, her work resists the pull of constant digital noise, embracing art as a tool for maintaining balance, humanity, freedom of expression, and self-discovery.
Her ultimate goal as an artist is to maintain a tangible connection to her humanity in a digital world. It is to maintain some level of freedom in a society always trying to strip it away. Freedom to be present with her daughter and family. Freedom to engage with and participate more in her community. Freedom to be regularly in tune with her inner child.