Tau Lewis

Using found, gifted, and recycled materials drawn from her personal environments, Tau Lewis constructs sculptural portraits, bodies, quilts and wall hangings, often at a large scale. The resulting figures are inspired by her immediate community or imagined ancestors, the materials assembled in an intuitive manner similar to how hip-hop or jazz musicians create their compositions. Lewis is self-taught and hand-stitches all of her works. This practice emerged from her interest in continuing diasporic practices of art making, which are labour intensive and emphasise the recycling of materials which bestow the resulting object with their own energy. Lewis’s work is rooted in exploring and healing personal, collective and historical traumas through intuitive acts of creation.