Artist & Founder, Seventh Dead World Studios
B.N. Blithe de Carona (Bee, she/her/hers) is a conceptual artist and Conjurist using grief, collecting, storytelling & ritual in the efforts to create work that seeks to heal herself & other multi-marginalized people of trauma caused by the constant politicization & commodification of their very existence.
Born and raised in St. Louis, MO, her work reflects themes of Blackness, queer femme identity, religious trauma & radical self-actualization.
She works primarily in premeditated performance, sculpture, collage, photography and creative writing-which is most evident in the lengthy titles adding weight to her portfolio.
Bee is a Black, queer, disabled Islamic Anarchist & practitioner of Conjure; her work depicts facets of her identity as such. She is particularly interested in the concept of the averted gaze and other ways to see.
Her collage work, which is inspired by her own journal entries & essays, often features found images of Black women donning metaphysical head coverings. Her portraiture is conceptual, mostly unedited and intentionally omits and/or obscures faces.
Bee’s sculpture work is site-specific, open ended and either wearable or interactive in some other way. Her 3D work is often composed of found objects, motion sensor lights and bleach degraded, deconstructed American flags interwoven with synthetic braiding hair & adorned with accessories used in Black hair care routines.
Her practice, like all other things in her life, is most heavily informed by her Blackness.
For mixed-media and 2D work, such as the series Call My Mama Not The Cops, Bee utilizes a method of background building via storytelling through a combination of digital printing, hand stamping/inking, and free & automatic writing done by hand.
These works are often fire treated and reconstructed using a meticulous layering process to realign the singed text until it’s readable again.
This process simulates a visual allusion to the call and response choir technique popular in Black churches & gospel music introduced to the artist by her grandmothers.
Through art, Bee practices veneration.
The artist currently resides in St. Louis, MO. She conducts a thrice weekly performance art series on Instagram called Speak To Me Freely. Click here to follow along.
See her sculpture Hidden Hijabi on view at the Colorado Fine Arts Center through January 11, 2025 for ALHAMDU: Muslim Futurism by MIPSTERZ.
Thank you for visiting Seventh Dead World Studios. May abundance never leave you.
“Sometimes, I just feel like…I could swallow the sun and never blister my throat.” -B.N. Blithe de Carona
B.N. Blithe de Carona is a mostly self-taught radical, queer Islamic woman & artist making work that seeks to heal herself & other multi-marginalized people of the trauma caused by the constant politicization, policing & commodification of their very existence by society at large.