Akira Hedrik, Trumped, oil on canvas, 36” x 24”

American, b. 1990, playing from Philadelphia, PA, USA

Akira Serene Hedrick studied for a year at The University of the Arts before transferring to The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to pursue and hone her craft. Time at this institution was both enlightening and traumatizing, as many of our most meaningful experiences tend to be. As a result she works with this constant pull against herself, struggling with questions of the point to her work, and to everything in general—as we tend to do. Her work acts as a documentation of her experiences and relations, as self-reflection and diagnosis, and as a masturbatory display of aesthetics.

Website: Akiraserene.weebly.com Email: akira.hedrick@yahoo.com

Thoughts on the Telephone process

My “assignment” was perfect for me at the time; it spoke to me in a beautifully distinct way. The subject matter was something I had been considering for a while, but this project gave me the push I needed to delve into it wholeheartedly.

I was handed someone else’s words (my “assignment” was a spoken word/video collaboration) and given the opportunity to expand on them with my own visuals. The collaboration between so many people across the world, interweaving so many genres of expression that tend to remain separate, is something of great interest to me. I was pleased to be a small part of this project.