Alek Shabazz brings her inner world to vivid life

Columbus artist Alek Shabazz said she has always lived in her own head, sharing how her boss recently gifted her with a pair of socks printed with the phrase “I’m overthinking.”

“And that’s me to a T,” Shabazz said, and laughed. “I am such a deep thinker, and I get in my head so much, to where I’m considering every possible scenario.”

This trait carries through into Shabazz’s work, with the artist inevitably seeing aspects of her own inner world reflected back at her even when her vivid portraits feature other people.

“I think it always comes back to me,” said Shabazz, whose work will appear in the 2024 Greater Columbus Arts Council Visual Arts Awards Exhibition opening at the Columbus Museum of Art on Friday, Aug. 2. (Other local artists featured in the display include Dillon Beck, Brett Davis and Marsha Mack.) “There’s always a double conversation, where I’m speaking to the audience, but what I’m saying then applies to me as well. It’s being able to sit down with myself and ask the hard questions about my choices and how they’ve impacted me. And then what are the steps I’m willing to take in order to progress past whatever feelings or trauma led me to even express this in the first place?”

One portrait in which the artist served as her own model – a rarity in her work – gradually evolved into a Giving Tree-like study, with Shabazz confronting the reality that there are times in her life when she gives so much of herself that it can leave her feeling emotionally hollowed out. She titled the piece “you drank till I was empty.”

“It was a conversation with myself about giving so much to where it feels like my energy is misdirected,” she said. “So much of what I do is playing on [the concept of] choice. And I definitely believe the actions we take and the interactions we have with people are a choice. And so, the piece definitely reflects my willingness and my choice to give my energy and my time to these people, while at the same time feeling betrayed or hurt by the lack of reciprocation.”

Other works have been shaped by past experiences, such as the solitude and sense of detachment the artist experienced when at age 17 she moved from Canton, Ohio, to Cleveland – a city where she had no friends or family on which to fall back. At the time, Shabazz created a series of portraits that she has only recently began to understand as her means to work through this sense of isolation.

“When I look at the portraits now, there are a lot of gaps, and there’s a lot of disorientation and a longing for presence,” she said. “And there was also a lot of emptiness, which definitely makes sense. I was 17 and new to a big city where I was pretty much by myself.”

Shabazz hasn’t always revealed so much of her inner-world in her work, tracing one later turning point to a critique from a professor at CCAD who credited her mark-making and technique while questioning the lack of storytelling present in some of her drawings. The criticism resonated with Shabazz, who at the time felt a lack of personal connection to her art. She described what followed as an intense period of research and consideration, including an exercise in which she concentrated on a study of the color yellow, learning how it was employed in art by other cultures and weighing how these ideas might resonate with her own experiences.

“And there was a whole style change almost in an instant. I remember doodling after class, and the sketch I came out with was so different from what I had done before. And I feel like that was me beginning to explore how I could combine the visual aspect with storytelling in my work,” said Shabazz, who acknowledged there are times she still struggles with just how emotionally exposed her colored pencil and oil pastel drawings can leave her feeling. “Art in general, it’s very sensitive, and there’s always that teetering moment where I’m weighing how much of myself I want to give up. So, it’s always interesting to see the direction it takes and the stories I choose to make a piece about. But I think each piece inspires me to push the boundaries even more, and to go bigger and more in depth with the storytelling. It’s all about pushing myself to be more vulnerable, basically.”