Andre Bradley lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. Bradley’s artistic, curatorial, and photo book practices currently explore the subject of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the black community. He utilizes mixed and digital media, photography, and installation as forms of ideological resistance that foreground lived experience, against the background of art.
Bradley graduated from Image Text Ithaca and the Rhode Island School of Design’s Photography MFA programs. Bradley also completed coursework at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Curatorial Practice MFA program. Bradley was named a George Ciscle Scholar in Curatorial Practice during his studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Bradley received the T.C. Colley Award for Photographic Excellence during his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Bradley's first photo-book Dark Archives, I-41
was shortlisted for the Photo-Text Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles and the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award, both in 2016. Bradley was the inaugural fellow of the Arc Baltimore/Curatorial Practice Fellowship in 2019, a junior fellow at Image Text Ithaca in 2015, and an artist-in-residence at the Tilt Institute for the Contemporary Image in 2016. Bradley’s work has been collected by public and private art institutions and libraries including the RISD Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Scripps College's Ella Strong Denison Library Rare Book Room.
CV
ART:
2020-PRESENT
2010-2020
Bad Selections
Digitally Altered JPG
Inkjet Prints
Digitally Altered JPG
Inkjet Prints
2014
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In moments of stress our bodies react. Physically they signal growth or deterioration. Sixth grade was an extremely stressful year for me. The stress I experienced caused my alopecia areata (AA) to flare up. AA is an autoimmune disease in which hair is lost, usually from the scalp, due to the body’s failure to recognize “self.” The body destroys its own tissue as if it were an invader. My hair began to fall out, and my peers made fun of me. They brought patches and glue to class.
In Bad Selections (AA) 2014, I appropriate images from barbershop charts. Placing them onto a blue backdrop in Photoshop, I crudely select fields of the face to delete. The resulting image is graphically arresting as the sky blue seems to emerge through the distorted face. The lightness of the colors and the floating nature of the head suggest a negated body consumed by blue. Each portrait is a broken person, violently disfigured against the backdrop of innocence and youth. In sixth grade, I began to learn about the dynamics of educational institutions—where I did or did not fit in them, based on my perceived defects. The educational institutions that ostensibly empower us can sometimes make us feel incompetent and incapable.
In moments of stress our bodies react. Physically they signal growth or deterioration. Sixth grade was an extremely stressful year for me. The stress I experienced caused my alopecia areata (AA) to flare up. AA is an autoimmune disease in which hair is lost, usually from the scalp, due to the body’s failure to recognize “self.” The body destroys its own tissue as if it were an invader. My hair began to fall out, and my peers made fun of me. They brought patches and glue to class.
In Bad Selections (AA) 2014, I appropriate images from barbershop charts. Placing them onto a blue backdrop in Photoshop, I crudely select fields of the face to delete. The resulting image is graphically arresting as the sky blue seems to emerge through the distorted face. The lightness of the colors and the floating nature of the head suggest a negated body consumed by blue. Each portrait is a broken person, violently disfigured against the backdrop of innocence and youth. In sixth grade, I began to learn about the dynamics of educational institutions—where I did or did not fit in them, based on my perceived defects. The educational institutions that ostensibly empower us can sometimes make us feel incompetent and incapable.