Kandy G. Lopez’s embroidered portraits are as vibrant and multifaceted as the individuals they portray. The interlocking of each stitch reflects a careful, thoughtful witnessing that informs her approach to developing visual narratives. According to Lopez, her process and relationship to artmaking are informed by curiosity. She’s constantly questioning the world around her. Once a full time painter, her journey into motherhood required that she also transform her practice. A chance encounter with thread while collaging opened a portal into a new channel for self-discovery and exploration: fiber.
As an Afro-Caribbean woman, Lopez’s own existence is interwoven into the grids that anchor each stitch of her work. Through her varied representations of everyday Black and Brown people, she explores the connections between humanity, empathy and how identity shapes our everyday existence. “I came to learn that the way that politics and classism works in the Dominican Republic is very much connected to the way that classism and politics works here in the United States,” says Lopez while reflecting on the socio-political themes that undergird many of her series. “Talking about issues of identity with family and hearing things people say [about other people of color] in passing triggers certain things within me. I think it’s important to have those conversations, even if they’re hard. I want others to think about why I choose certain people within the work.” Through stitching, Lopez challenges herself materially and conceptually to convey these messages. With the completion of each work, she continues to learn from her materials and how their use and placement aids or hinders the conversation at hand.
Lopez’s art represents the voices and experiences of those most impacted by systemic oppression, while also not shying away from the ways that these prejudices can be upheld intra-communally. She speaks to the double consciousness of existing in a racialized body and navigating the world as “other,” sometimes met with exclusion by those who are facing the same marginalization. By playing with the softness of yarn to characterize this experience, she aims to invoke the vulnerability and tenderness that exists alongside the strength and resilience needed for survival.
While portraiture may be a centuries-old tradition, Lopez’s tapestries confront viewers with a beautiful spectrum of brown skin, inserting playful interventions that breathe freshness into the technique. The absence of a background, as seen in many of her pieces, allows us to see the subject in the fullness of their being. Existing in a world where they are often asked to code-switch and shrink, these larger-than-life representations allow each body the space to breathe, instead requiring the audience to look upward to meet their gaze. She purposely captures them from below, countering the othering and denigration that society would typically use to portray them as less than.” I see them standing with purpose, exuding confidence and self-determination, existing as their most authentic selves. She purposely begins with the eyes when starting a new piece, taking time to care for the unique features that capture her subject’s essence. Her placement of yarn feels raw and intuitive, toying with light and shadow through a metaphorical cross-hatching between squares of hooking mesh. Her strategic use of color and tone elevates each person the viewer meets from a replica of a photograph to a multi-dimensional being with an equally rich background.
Lopez methodically chooses varying weights and colors of yarn to emphasize the skin and hair of those she features as an act of celebration and gesture of resistance to the colorism and texturism that is often upheld within diasporic communities. She specifically utilizes male subjects to encourage conversations around policing, masculinity and race. Pieces such as Lamenting Luis speak to the innocence that is not often afforded to young Black boys in society, highlighting the cost of adultification. In works like R² – Roscoe and Reggie and Babushka Sheldon, we see a reflection of kinship and camaraderie, a playful moment of self-expression. Both pieces present oppositional narratives that counter mainstream misrepresentations of Black men.
“By playing with the softness of yarn to characterize this experience, [Lopez] aims to invoke the vulnerability and tenderness that exists alongside the strength and resilience needed for survival.”
While so much of the discourse we encounter today is meant to sow discord around our differences, I see Kandy’s work as a reminder to see the beauty in each other and to remain commanding, audacious and free. Each grid is an archive that celebrates the vivid personal adornment, ancestral expression and symphony of color that can be found across the diaspora.
“Existing in a world where they are often asked to code-switch and shrink, these larger-than-life representations allow each body the space to breathe, instead requiring the audience to look upward to meet their gaze.”
Kandy G. Lopez was born in New Jersey and moved with her family to Florida at a young age. She received her BFA and BS from the University of South Florida, concentrating in Painting and in Marketing and Management. She received her MFA with a concentration in Painting from Florida Atlantic University in 2014. She has taught at Florida Atlantic University and Daytona State College, and is now teaching as an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Arts at the Halmos College of Art & Sciences at NOVA Southeastern University.
As an Afro-Caribbean visual artist, Lopez is eager to be challenged materialistically and metaphorically when representing marginalized individuals that inspire and move her. Her works are created out of the necessity to learn something new about her people and culture. Lopez is interested in developing a nostalgic dialogue between the artwork and the viewer. If she’s not learning from her materials and how they affect the message, it’s not worth creating.
For more information about Kandy G. Lopez, visit kandyglopez.com / @kandyglopez
Dr. Sharbreon Plummer (she/her) is a curator, researcher, and creative practitioner with a heart for expanding how artistic practice is defined, supported, and framed through theory. Her upbringing in Southern Louisiana informs her interest and investment in how culture and ancestral memory act as influencers of identity and contemporary artistic production, especially within textile-based practices. For nearly fifteen years, her praxis has involved shaping resources for communities of creators whose work serves as an act of resistance, self-determination, and collective freedom.
She has facilitated and presented work at institutions such as Project Row Houses, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Rhode Island School of Design, Americans for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Princeton University, among others. A few of her creative projects include her internationally distributed zine, Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (2022) and The People’s Quilting Bee (2023-24), an international public humanities course and quilting circle co-founded with Dr. Jess Bailey. She has organized curatorial projects such as Of Salt and Spirit (2024), Stitching Abolition (2022) and Mirrored Migration (2017).
Sharbreon has also been featured as an artist-in-residence at Rogers Art Loft (Las Vegas, NV) and Arquetopia (Oaxaca, MX). She is the author of the forthcoming text Black Quilts: Memory, Methods and Medicine (Chronicle Books, 2026) and is a staff writer at Quiltfolk Magazine. Sharbreon currently serves as Artistic Director at Threewalls and maintains her creative consultancy AYA Thought Studio. She holds a Ph.D. in Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University.
To learn more about the work of Sharbreon Plummer visit sharbreonplummer.com/ @sharbreon