Llanor Alleyne

One of the pleasures of being invited to #CARIFESTAXV was the opportunity to lead my workshop, “Archiving the Self: Collaging Personal Cartographies”. I was delighted that every available seat was filled with participants ranging from teenagers to people in their 70s, many of them eager to make their first collage masterpieces.  My collage-making began as an illustrative practice; a way to turn my microfiction stories into visual language. For this workshop, I wanted to emphasize collage-making as a journaling practice and as an entry point into emotional centering and remembering. With the prompt to think of a memory that delights or moves them, I encouraged my participants to close their eyes for a few minutes and then write or sketch the thoughts and scenes that came to mind. Some of them were instantly overwhelmed by this task, but I gently reminded them that the beauty of collage is not perfection or realism, but its function as a path to genuine self expression.  After the first hour, I was deeply moved by what was emerging in my class. Plucking from tables of fabric, paper, baubles, ribbons, glitter, and other ephemera, my participants began building visual stories about picking ackees with family, their everlasting love of their children and partners, their hopes for the future, and memories of past lives lived elsewhere but returning to Barbados as solid ground. I was so damn proud, ya’ll!  I wish I had a slide for every masterpiece, because they all worked so very diligently on these works. If you were in this class and you still haven’t been in touch with me, please send me a DM here on instagram or through my site, which is linked in my bio. Thank you all for sharing parts of yourselves and your lives with me. It was truly a delight to spend time with every single one of you.  #collage @artworkshop #barbados

What a time was had last week! I was honored to be invited by @ncfbarbados and its Visual Arts coordinator Akilah Watts (@stricklyakilah ) to participate as a #CARIFESTAXV speaker and workshop co-leader for the “Fragments & Futures: Collage as Radical Reclamation” last Sunday at Queens Park. Speaking alongside my sister in collage, Gherdai Hasell (@hassel_free ), Akilah probed deep into our individual studio practices, how we contextualize our work, and what boundaries we set for ourselves as we plumb our personal and public archives to piece our works together. It was a lively discussion, made even better by the active audience participation and the general wit and openness of the room. Thanks to all who attended and allowed me to share why art-making matters so much to me. Slide 1: A Group photo before we all took to the stage. (📸: @hassel_free ) Slide 2: Our talk on the monitor. Slide 3: Akilah, Gherdai and I in conversation Slide 4: Gherdai and I beaming. #collage #barbados #artisttalk

I was delighted to work on this collage commission, Black Madonna: Divinity, for a private collector who had just graduated from seminary school. Measuring 25.5 x 19.5 inches on Canson navy blue drawing paper, Divinity grew out of weeks of conversation about African spirituality, what we owe our communities, and what we gift ourselves in the face of adversity. Each layer, from hand-drawn florals to painted paper, carries something from those exchanges. Swipe through to see details of the piece. You can read more about the evolution and symbols in this work, as well as other commissions, on my website. Link in bio. #collage #cutandpaste #mixedmediacollage #blackwomenartists #blackartmatters #contemporarycollage #artcommission #artcollectors #spiritualart

Tourné Gallery presents Llanor Alleyne: A Retrospective Now live on Artsy — link in bio This online retrospective charts my collage work from 2018 to now, including a look back on work I started in Barbados in the late 2010s. It features new works from the My Girls series, including “Queenie” as well as available works from The Inklings and Moonlight series.  As a multidisciplinary artist, I think of collage as world-building — combining illustration, paint, cutting, and layering to create work that explores home, selfhood, and belonging. 🗓️ On view through August 31📍 Online at Artsy (via @tournegallery )📩 Inquiries: @tournegallery #collageart #blackwomenartists #contemporarycollage #artsyshow #caribbeanartists #fineartcollage #onlineartshow#artsy

Inside my latest newsletter: a solo show, a zine, and new work from my studio. Fighting the social media algorithms is a full-time job with little reward — especially if you're a small creator. I wanted a way to share what I'm working on with fewer filters, fewer hoops, and more depth. So I started my own newsletter, Studio Notes. This is the second issue. It holds a lot — my solo show opening tomorrow, a fun zine, and an ongoing look at my process and new projects. ➡️ Slide 1: Title card — what this issue covers ➡️ Slide 2: My first retrospective, opening August 1 via Tourné Gallery on Artsy ➡️ Slide 3: A recent private commission exploring divinity and transformation ➡️ Slide 4: Small still life triptychs made as studies as larger work ➡️ Slide 5: A hand-folded zine, Seats of Flower, meditating on the past year of collage making ➡️ Slide 6: Bonus: what I’m reading, watching, and listening to ➡️ Slide 7: Subscribe and read the full issue (link in bio) If you’ve been curious about what I’ve been working on lately, this is a good place to land. Thanks for continuing to support my art practice. @tournegallery #StudioNotes #CollageArtist #LlanorAlleyne #ContemporaryArt #BlackWomenArtists #ZineArt #ArtNewsletter #MixedMediaArt #ArtPractice

Happening tomorrow: Congratulations to Bianca Moña, Who will present her graduate seminar, "Space and the Creative Imagination", a research-driven talk exploring how Black women artists reimagine the natural world as a site of refuge, power, and creative possibility. Bianca will discuss my work alongside the beautiful work of @dhunter.art . ------- GRADUATE SEMINAR ‘Space and the Creative Imagination’ Wed, 30 July, 10.00am - 11.30 pm (AST) Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/95687857424 Presented by Bianca Mona, PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies This presentation explores how Black women artists reimagine the natural world as a site of retreat, rejuvenation, joy, and imaginative power. Focusing on the artwork of Llanor Alleyne and Dominique Hunter, this goal is to delve into how their visual practices cultivate fertile ground for Black women’s presence, rest, and creativity.

NEW WORK: The Canes is a new series of handmade collages that extends my #sketchbook practice and deepens my exploration of the sugarcane field as a site of play, self-expression, freedom, and love. Begun in spring 2025, the series builds on visual and thematic ideas first introduced in my Queering Cane sketchbook that I started in 2017 in anticipation of participation in the PRIZM exhibition, Universal Belonging, during Art Basel in Miami. Each #collage in The Canes is composed using hand-cut color paper, painted mylar, monoprints, and hand-drawn elements. Mounted on cream Canson paper on acrylic sheets and sized at 11.7 x 16.5 inches, the works continue my use of silhouettes in natural surrounds to underscore moments of intimacy, joy, and communion. Where sugarcane fields have historically symbolized labor, surveillance, and colonial extraction, here they are reimagined as spaces for softness and connection. The visual vocabulary is deliberately playful — a vibrant reclamation of the sugar field through a transfigurative queer lens.

New work: Moonlight Blue: Among the Hibiscus. 15in x 22in. Mixed-media collage on black drawing paper. Fourth in the ongoing Moonlight Blue collage series. #collage #mixedmediart #botanicalgardens # #cutandpaste #gluepaperscissors

Big news: “Another Poem” has been acquired by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art for its permanent collection. Grateful to Andil Gosine for the invitation and to Charmaine Robinson and Tourne Gallery for the continued support. This one means a lot. #Repost @tournegallery ・・・ Tourné is pleased to announce the acquisition of Llanor Alleyne’s “Another Poem” (@llapen ) by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York, NY.  Alleyne’s large-scale mixed media work was part of the museum’s 2024 exhibition, The Plural of He, dedicated to the life and work of Colin Robinson, the Trinidadian American poet, critic, and social justice advocate. Alleyne was one of five artists selected in 2022 for a residency at the museum.  Andil Gosine, curator of The Plural of He, said of the acquisition: “Llanor was the first artist I commissioned for the exhibition, because her work is so beautifully composed, so subtle and understated in its intentions, but also so inviting to an audience to find her story, and theirs. That ‘Another Poem’ grew from her multiple connections to Colin’s work — his poetry, of course, but also his HIV/AIDS and LGBT activism, and his formative years in Trinidad — made it an ideal piece for the museum to add to their permanent collection. It’s a work that speaks to Colin’s significance and represents an important stage of development in Llanor’s practice, which will only grow by leaps and bounds.” Alleyne is a Barbados-born, New York-raised mixed media artist who describes collaging as “world building,” supporting her own journey of self-discovery and reinvention. In 2017, her collages were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is also included in Nature’s Wild, an exhibition originally scheduled to debut at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC that is now heading to Toronto, Canada. Alleyne’s work has appeared in numerous publications and her collage, “Respite of the Black Madonnas,” was recently featured in HAMMER&HOPE magazine. For more information about available works by Llanor Alleyne, please contact Tourné at +1-212-219-2656 or [email protected]

Delighted to have contributed artwork, “Moonlight: Respite of the Black Madonnas”, to the timely, stunning and jam-packed sixth issue of @readhammerandhope . #Repost @readhammerandhope with @use.repost ・・・ The sixth issue of Hammer & Hope is now live. It’s morning again in America. Federal agents snatch students off the streets. The White House boasts of banishing hundreds of people to a Salvadoran prison. Head Start and domestic violence shelters await the chopping block. The Trump administration is repurposing antiracism into a grenade and lobbing it at the remnants of the welfare state. But regular people are providing the varied, creative, noncooperative opposition to the neo-fascist administrative takeover that we need. Meet some of them in our new issue. Tap the link in @readhammerandhope bio to read the free articles. And help sustain their work by becoming a member.

New work:: Moonlight Blue: Night Swim (At the Waterfall) 15inx22in #mixedmedia #collage on black drawing paper #cutandpaste #botanical #garden #handdrawn #moonlight

Grateful to have been part of “In the Flesh: Critical Reflections on Black Women’s Experiences of Food, Embodiment, and Type 2 Diabetes”, hosted by The Institute for Gender and Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit (UWI) and The Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga. My 30in. x 44in. mixed-media collage, ”Tea and Empathy,” was featured in the event’s art exhibition, visually exploring the impact of Type 2 Diabetes on Black Barbadian women. The piece incorporates traditional medicinal plants, botanical symbolism, and references to Barbados’s sugar industry—engaging with themes of healing, resilience, and communal care. Though I joined remotely, I was honored to participate in a rich discussion alongside Dr. Tonya Haynes ( @sh3ralee ) , Dr. Nicole Charles, Simone Asia (@simoneasiart ) and Anna Gibson (@anner_er ) . Grateful for the thoughtful conversation on art, history, and Black women’s health. A special thank you to @stricklyakilah for capturing this moment so beautifully. To read about the making of and symbolism in “Tea & Empathy” see link in bio.  #collage #mixedmedia #BlackWomenAndHealth #Barbados #MixedMediaArt #Type2Diabetes #VisualStorytelling #HealingThroughArt