Artist Statement — Britt Richardson (professionally known as b’Anansi Knowbody, a general practitioner of the arts)

My practice has always been concerned with the mechanics of seeing — how we perceive, what we are allowed to perceive, and how perception itself becomes a tool of power. Over the years, this investigation has taken many forms: performance, moving image, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Though the materials and methods have shifted, the question remains constant — how can the act of looking reveal the systems that shape what we see?

As b.Anansi Knowbody, I began my work through a language of intensity and confrontation: film, sound, and physical gesture were tools for exposing invisible hierarchies and the psychological weight of being seen or unseen. That urgency has since evolved into a quieter discipline — one that finds resistance in stillness, patience, and observation.

The series Imaginings from the Negative Space and In Crease, The Fold mark this turn. Composed of wood, graphite, and charcoal, the works appear at first glance to be pure black surfaces — references to Malevich and Rothko — yet, as light shifts, fine geometric patterns emerge: constellations, architectural grids, fragments of unseen worlds. The pieces depend on proximity, illumination, and time; they invite viewers to slow down, to witness revelation as a physical process. Influenced by the phenomenological experiments of Olafur Eliasson, Dan Flavin, and James Turrell, I use light not simply as a medium, but as a collaborator in perception.

This concern with vision and control carried into X, Y, Z (or Simple Complexity), where I reimagined bureaucratic and linguistic systems as labyrinths. The letters themselves became mazes — bold monochromes that conceal subtle tonal shifts and intricate linear structures. These works consider how simplicity can disguise complexity, how order can conceal entrapment. Color replaced graphite as a new field of inquiry; the visual purity of red, yellow, and blue became a metaphor for ideological absolutes.

My most recent body of work, The Line as a Three-Dimensional Object, extends these inquiries into physical and social space. What began as a pedagogical experiment during the pandemic — a way to help my students think through play and improvisation — evolved into a sculptural meditation on connection. The line, once confined to the surface, now emerges into air. Wire arcs outward from plinths and canvases, casting shadows that draw ephemeral constellations across sand and wall. Viewers are invited to touch and alter the work, transforming authorship into collaboration.

Through these transitions, I have come to see my materials as living agents — graphite as residue, charcoal as memory, light as revelation, line as breath. My geometric language has become increasingly organic, the forms bending toward intuition, rhythm, and the pulse of chance.

Across all my work, I return to a simple belief: perception is never neutral. Every act of seeing is an act of becoming — an opportunity to rediscover presence within systems that seek to contain it. My practice, at its core, is a rehearsal for freedom — an unfolding conversation between structure and openness, darkness and light, silence and the possibility of voice.

— b.Anansi Knowbody