Berette S Macaulay is an interdisciplinary artist, photographer, curator, and writer with training and performance roots in theatre and contemporary dance. She was born in Sierra Leone but grew up in Jamaica. She spent much of her childhood frequently traveling with her parents between Jamaica, England and West Africa before moving to the US for college - living in Atlanta, Georgia, New York City, and now in Everett, Washington. She experiences her im/migrant identity as both liminal and as a constant, surfacing in her work as interrogations of be/longing, trans*national personhood, identity-performance, memory, mythmaking, and love.

Berette's work primarily features various studies in portraiture and the human form which have been exhibited and published within the US and internationally including Amsterdam, India, Singapore, and Brazil. Under her photography moniker 'SeBiArt' her documentary work on OCCUPY! is in the International Center of Photography collections. Her portrait series “Neue Rootz” featuring her African-German family was acquired by the National Gallery of Jamaica.

It follows that Berette’s curatorial practice and research spans multicultural narratives and Black diasporic hi/stories. Her first show, “illusive self” at Taller Boricua Gallery, NY, brought together 19 artists interrogating migrant and immigrant life in New York. In 2020 she curated “Exploring Passages Within the Black Diaspora” at Photographic Center Northwest as part of the ‘MFON in Seattle’ program she organized, featuring photo-artists whose range of cultural perspectives challenge the notion of monolithic ‘Blackness’. Most recently she had the honor of being commissioned to curate the permanent exhibition “Mystic of a Woman” (2021) on Rita Marley’s life, now showing at the Bob Marley Museum. As the inaugural Curatorial Fellow at On the Boards, she is developing “UN-TITLED”, a collaborative performance project addressing cultural displacement and reclamation in the face of gentrification. She is also founder/lead organizer of Black Cinema Collective (BCC) — a project of i•ma•gine e•volve®.

“My creative path began as playful experiments, or conceptual endeavors that tangled with philosophical questions on the ‘human condition.’ Social issue concerns showed up in my writing or conversations and were unavoidably inﬂuenced by the political and immigrant histories that shape my family life in the West. My years in the US have been rife with sharp critiques of the systems that shape our lives and impact my sense of place wherever I call home, but it took me a while to figure out how to translate this into my work — and frankly, I’m still figuring that out. In recent years, I’ve begun commenting on and questioning colonial systems of class and race, the advent of social media, surveillance, self-performance culture, and how these constructions keep mutating even as we resist them, even within our efforts to dismantle them. I’m really interested in social psychology; examining belief systems, the recognition of unseen communities, and how we perpetuate hierarchies of power through ego and desire.”

“My practice is a space of healing and calm, but also agonizingly frustrating at times — especially when problem-solving a piece or project with inadequate resources, skills, or time to do the work I imagine. That’s due to an anxiety-based capitalist-driven modality of working towards a ‘result’ for exhibition or consumption. You know, the 'professional' practice of being an artist. I understand but resent this occupational hazard, because it shifts the energy from ‘making’ to labor, which can contaminate the creative process. There’s a release that ALWAYS comes from the process of making for its own sake, when I can birth something into being, openly trusting or witnessing the unknown. It’s an ineffable satisfaction that’s just for me, and yet it can be the most resonant communication that moves another person. It’s spirit energy, and I’ve learned repeatedly that the healthiest alignment with my community and my environment is always served by claiming quiet time to nurture that. I’m re/learning this again actually, to hold space for whatever comes next, especially in these years of utter turmoil in our world.”

“I often think about mandates offered by Nina Simone and James Baldwin: She said, “an artist’s duty is to reﬂect the times;” in his famed remarks on The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity, he said, “if you have that funny terrible thing which every artist can recognize and no artist can deﬁne — you are responsible… to people to lighten [their darkness], and it does not matter what happens to you.” I’m evolving between these two points — addressing social issues, yes, but also prioritizing the expression of joy, beauty, and hope.”

“My cultural identity figures strongly in what compels me to work now. It consumes much of how I interpret my life – which intensified after moving to Washington. My photography has changed significantly since being here. Before, my practice was intimate, and most of my past work was in portraiture. When I lived in New York, I worked with artist friends and chosen family with whom I had active and frequent contact. Many of them were from all over the world, from familiar cultures. When I moved here, I had fewer cultural mirrors to my multicultural existence, and racialized erasures were sharp. I was often the only Black person I encountered for weeks, and I rarely had access to immigrants or folks who understood ways of being outside of the PNW context. Of course, these communities exist, but I had no entry into them. It was hard to make friends here. The idea of be/longing became a physical yearning, the distance became a silencing force, and the intense in/visibility was unlike I’d ever experienced. I made little work during this time, even though I finally had more space to do it! I realized quite definitively that I’m not a loner artist; I am driven and inspired by community and collaboration. Without this, I shut down. My photography now includes il/legible figures in wide frame environmental scenes; on the land, its vastness serves as both a metaphor and physical evidence of these experiences.
“Of the six years here, I’ve spent four in cultural and social isolation. The Covid lockdowns started at the end of my fourth year here, when I was midway through my master's program at UW-Bothell, so the safe-distancing mandates felt like a strange return. Thankfully, I’d met many wonderful people through my academic and arts communities. This time, it wasn’t isolated silence, but Zoom overdrive like it was for us all. It will be interesting to see if and how portraiture returns to my practice as we begin to gather in person again.”

Berette Macaulay

Michelle Kumata

Genevieve Gaudreau