by TRACY ZOLLINGER TURNER
Artist Larissa Danielle’s multimedia work has often been inspired by political and social realities. In 2020, those realities felt particularly overwhelming. “I was really influenced by a lot of the Black trauma that was going on I don’t want to say until recently, because it’s always going on,” she says.
But as she researched the murder of Breonna Taylor for a sculptural collage called
We Are (Breonna), the process “was just heartbreaking,” she says. “I kept thinking, you know, someone I knew could have been her. I could have been her.” Danielle says she decided to “take a step back from ‘reporting the news’” in her artwork and turn toward something healing. “Creating work like that is very emotional. I had to let my heart rest for a second,” she says.