Alaina Cherry is a London-based American artist exploring black femme representations of love and pleasure, the internalization of false representation, and the interpersonal connections that arise in these identities. She observes the bind where one can’t embrace the erotic without being hypersexualized, but she wants to challenge this obstacle and find ways of navigating the intersectional plain of black pleasure and trauma. Early black feminist frameworks have focused on the latter in order to articulate the particular faces of oppression; Alaina wants to show this dilemma through the tension in her work while also illuminating the possibilities of pleasure and the beauties of existing within our black feminine skins.

Alaina utilizes oil and acrylic paints to create complex compositions that engage the viewer and force them to look closer at the work and at themselves. She uses large scale canvases and vibrant colors to emphasize the importance of representation, showcase gender and race dynamics, and create an interpersonal moment between her figures and her viewer – simulating the interpersonal connections that represent the structural patterns being discussed.

Alaina is also interested in the internalization of these structural and interpersonal oppressions, and how certain representations and patterns of perception influence our relationship with ourselves, how we have been conditioned to move about the world, and the complicated nature of self preservation in white patriarchal spaces. Alaina is in her second year of pursuing her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths school of London. She graduated from Brown University in the spring of 2024 with BAs in Visual Art and Cognitive Neuroscience. Alaina’s first solo exhibition, “Inter/Intra Personal” debuted at the List Art Center in Providence, RI, in the spring of 2024. Since moving to London in September 2024, she has been in several group shows, and continues to grow her practice.