Inspired by the African Diaspora, Béatrice Lebreton sources her multicultural heritage and current events as she creates work that encourages the viewer’s engagement and interpretation.
Working primarily in mixed media, Lebreton combines textiles, stitched and beaded surfaces with painted sections on the canvas as a means of commemoration and interaction. The patterns, fabrics, and beads become a focal motif that add a tactile touch and fuse into what she characterizes as a language stretched between the limits of the imaginary and history.
Still, storytelling is quite important to her practice, as evidenced by the use of combining text into th composition. She engages viewers visually on multiple levels while creating a space for curiosity in examining the information embedded within the work.
Unapologetically, Lebreton celebrates womanhood. Throughout her body of artistic expressions, she shatters the stereotypes women are born into and illustrate growth and change. Her art carries connotations of identity, social discomfort, feminism, representation and transformation.
Her work is in private collections throughout the United States and France. Exhibitions include the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago, Winston-Salem State University, the African American Museum in Dallas, Woman Made Gallery Chicago, Columbia University, among others.
Likewise, Lebreton has amassed a portfolio to include public art commissions for hospitals, hotels, the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York, VIA Metropolitan Transit system in San Antonio and the University of Oregon University, to list a few.
She has been featured in the American Art Review, the Dallas Morning News and the International Review of African American Art, in addition to other noted publications. Equally, Lebreton has garnered broadcast media attention appearing on local affiliates of national news programming from ABC, CBS and NBC.
Lebreton is a French native presently based in Harlem. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris and a Master of Ethno-aesthetic, with a concentration in African Art from La Sorbonne University.
