SHAQUI REED
SHAQUI REED
Shaqui Reed is a Chicago-based artist and designer. Reed studied fine art at the Chicago High School for the Arts and received her BFA in Fashion Design in 2018 from Columbia College Chicago. Reed is currently studying at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, where she will receive her Master’s in Design(2022). Reed has exhibited in numerous galleries throughout Chicago, including shows at The Hyde Park Art Center, SpringHill Suites, The Harris Theater, The Chicago Cultural Center, Columbia College Chicago, and the School of the Art Institute Chicago. Her work has won awards through both the Scholastic Art and Writing awards and All-City Art exhibitions. In 2016, Reed took part in a group exhibition with Sculptures Objects Functional Art and Design, also known as SOFA art exhibition in a show titled, “Four years later.” Recent exhibitions include the School for the Art Institute Chicago (2021) and Homewood Arts Council (2021).
ARTIST STATEMENT
Shaqui Reed's work examines areas of imperfections expressed by irregularity, incompleteness, rawness, and simplicity. Her designs typically involve deconstructing, distressing, layering, and piecing together what is left behind. Her textile works speak of the color and texture of her fears. Her fears are represented through the roughness of the denim and the different shades of blues. Her work uses repetition of pattern, line, shape, stitch work, and surface manipulation to narrate the juxtaposition of complexity and simplicity. Her love for denim translates to exploring different shades of denim, textiles, lines, hand stitching, and patchwork. Transcending the conventions of learned experience as a fashion designer, Shaqui Reed explores new adventures within the definition of herself. Her current body of work explores cultural intersections as a source of her identity crisis. Her other works focus on the grooming process, routine, adorning and celebrating black pride through memories and shared experiences, and the use of hair, hair product, and hair ornaments. She uses the skin, applications, and the building of structures to come to a place of understanding self.