araminta, the dreamer

Photo by Tiffany Thomas

About Alivia, aka araminta the dreamer

Alivia Blade is a visual artist from Louisville, KY. She received a BA in Graphic Design from Columbia College Chicago in 2017. Alivia also engaged in creating collaborative installation works around memory, childhood, and gender performance at Columbia.

In 2020, Alivia began her solo artistic practice, expanding on her explorations of gender and black feminism by creating sculptures that incorporated synthetic hair, combs, and styling tools. These works were exhibited in her solo show, wandering home, at houseguest gallery in Louisville, KY, in 2021. 

In recent years, Alivia’s art practice has developed toward collage work—finding solace in the images of her grandmothers and Harriet Tubman, they’ve become the guiding figures of her collage practice. Alivia continues to create collages honoring her ancestral lineage, investigating Kentucky history, and centering the agency and liberation of black women and femmes.

Alivia’s passion for honoring her grandmothers and Harriet Tubman ascended in the creation of paper-mache shrines. She found embedding her fingers in paper pulp, arranging mosaic pieces, and seashells created another avenue of intimacy with her beloveds.  The shrines rise like cave stalagmites, recalling the underground worlds that black folks historically utilized for freedom. Paper-mache “altar tools” complement the shrines, creating Sanctuaria: a communal installation experience for cultivating dreams of liberation.