PRAYER CLOSET:
The Body, Black Congregation, and Fugitivity
Audre Lorde says the erotic is firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. The closet is a place of meditation and suppression. The queer closet considers the things we can not openly express. The prayer closet is the physical or metaphorical private space where we go to pray and seek God. Prayer Closet: The Body, Black Congregation, and Fugitivity considers how these two closets fold into one another. Prayer Closet thinks about the Black sanctified church as the intersections of race, sexuality, pleasure, and constraint.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lionel Frazier White III (b. Washington, D.C.; lives and works in Washington, D.C.) is a Washington D.C native, arts educator and interdisciplinary conceptual artist who works in painting, drawing, wood sculpture, installation, and mixed media collage. White’s work explores themes of forced and coerced labor and its effect on family pathology, erasure, displacement, reassertion, and gentrification. White holds a Bachelors in Fine Arts from The George Washington University Corcoran school of Art and Design (2018) and is a graduate of The Duke Ellington School of the Arts High School in Washington, D.C. His work has been exhibited at the D.C Commission on Arts and Humanities, Prince George's African American Art Museum and Cultural Center, Torpedo Factory |Connect The Dots, Rush Arts Galleries, and Area 405. White was a 2019 Halcyon Arts Lab Cohort 3 Fellow in Residence in Washington DC.