Erica Maria Littlejohn

They/Them/Theirs

Erica Maria Littlejohn is a St. Louis and Chicago-based multimedia artist, primarily working in video and fibers. They graduated with a BA in Studio Art from Kenyon College and are currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They work heavily with historical material and often work with themes of family, collective and anecdotal history and the transmutability of the past. Most of Littlejohn’s work comes from their identity as a biracial person. For much of their childhood, they felt frustrated by their identity. People's hatred made them scared to claim it, so they pantomimed their way through their childhood, trying to adhere to the racial standards of a broken society and seeking the validation of those who could not see that their ambiguity was beauty. In their work, they search to heal the schism that they feel exists in their identity as a mixed person. How does one reconcile identifying with both the colonizer and the colonized? The traumatizer and the traumatized. The work that they have shared comes from a series that they are currently working on entitled thresholds. These works are composite images of West African kente cloth and American colonial overshot coverlet patterns. Both traditionally weaved in cotton, these two weaving histories have become representations of their identity and the liminality they feel as a biracial person. Through these works, Littlejohn not only seeks to understand personal and generational trauma but also hopes to explore the themes of healing through the act of reckoning and joy.