Artist Statement
My work is about protecting the self. The processes of using non-verbal communication like exchanging shared cultural, historical, and familial cues and ideas for the purpose of belonging and security. With clothing and gesture, we hone an image to present to the social world. We signal authority or meekness, we grant permission or communicate rejection.
I’m interested in the way we define ourselves by projecting our crafted identities into public spaces. How this is intertwined with old and oppressive systems. The systems endure and replicate through collective practices and rituals which display themselves thorough status markers or other universal means of conveying self-image, aesthetic, interpersonal allegiance, citizenship, lineage, social status, etc. We deploy such things to protect ourselves and preserve our identities, and these same markers ‘use’ us to perpetuate social hierarchies and to protect what ever systems they are born of.
About
Jite Agbro is a Nigerian American artist from Seattle, WA. She is currently represented by Patricia Rovzar Gallery in Seattle, WA. She is best known for her colorful figurative artwork featuring layered patterns, sharp contrast, and fabric and paper collage. Agbro has completed several solo exhibitions and large-scale installations around the Northwest, including P.L.U.A. (Proposed Land Use Action) at MAD Art (2022), Deserving at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (2019) and Skap-got at 4Culture Gallery (2018). Notable group exhibitions include the Gates Foundation 20th Anniversary at the Gates Foundation Discovery Center (2020). She has also received support and funding from Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Shunpike, Pratt Fine Arts Center, and The James & Janie Washington Jr. Foundation. Agbro studied fine art at Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle, WA) and California College of Arts (Oakland, CA) before completing a B.A. in Environmental Design at Evergreen State College and an M.S. in Design and Engineering at the University of Washington.