My name is Rickyah “RB” Blake. I am a visual artist with a focus on storytelling and image-making. I utilize performance, photography+video, and installation to showcase my perspective on the world. Originally born in St.Louis, MO and raised in Brooklyn, New York, I am engulfed in street art, performance, and installation that can’t be seen in a gallery. Every day human activity inspires me.

Recently I was watching an Amazon series “Cross”, a series featuring common themes in modern media, cop-aganda with a hint of racial injustice and sensationalized serial killing rationalized by a powerful/rich psychopath. During Episode 3, the killer has a conversation with its victim about what art is, he defines it as forcing people to see what they’d rather ignore. “Profound”, I thought somehow enchanted by the intellect of a serial killer. 

There’s something ironic about “big tech” monopoly producing a series that single handlely depicts: propaganda, racial injustice, corruption, and violence. In this scenario lies the praxis of my visual arts practice. Race, politics, technology, media capitalism, corruption, control and empathy are common themes that direct my research and outcomes. What interests me are the subjects behind the veil that we are typically too distracted to see or what we’d rather ignore. In oblivion lies privilege and my works disrupt that. The world is contaminated of pain and suffering, who are we to ignore it?

Being of African American heritage, these harsh truths aren’t easy for me to ignore. Rather then sit in it, this Blackness is transformed. My visual art practices is grounded in two methodologies, image-making and story-telling. Through creating images: photography, video, and digital art to depict the impact of accessibility of modern technology in contemporary art practice. More intimately, I tell stories through performance, and installation emphasizing the labor and physicality in being an artist.