Denver Art Museum Film Feature | BLACK/BROWN

Written By Tya Alisa Anthony

BLACK/BROWN

Tya Alisa Anthony

Born 1978 in Colorado Springs, CO.

Works in Denver, CO 2020

Created for the October 2020 Untitled: Creative Fusions at Home. “We the people vocalize two words, Black and Brown. Hoping all connect to the words in their own way. Seeing the movement of our lips and hearing the annunciation of each loaded word. Honoring time and space for Black and Brown bodies. Speaking love and light into these words. Taking the time to help a friend. Random acts of kindness with a tool that we all have access to. Our voice. Sharing just two words and 20 seconds.” – Tya Alisa Anthony

On August 23, 2020, officers on the Kenosha Police Department shot Jacob Blake seven times on video.

August 25 was the three-month anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.

August 24 was the one year anniversary of the murder of Elijah McClain.

August 13 was the five-month anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s murder. 

The list of names of Black and Brown folks killed by police grows every day. 


Tya Alisa Anthony

Tya Alisa Anthony is an American artist, photographer, writer, and independent curator whose work explores memory, mythology, ancestry, and the quiet ways people leave themselves behind in the objects they touch. For more than twenty years, her practice has existed at the intersection of visual research, education, and cultural storytelling, investigating resilience through the body, the landscape, historical archives, and the natural world.

Working across photography, collage, cyanotype, botanical collections, handmade books, and mixed media, Anthony approaches each body of work as an evolving archive rather than a finished statement. She is drawn to weathered photographs, heirlooms, medicinal plants, folklore, ritual objects, forgotten architecture, and the symbolic language that connects cultures across time. Her work asks how identity is preserved, transformed, and remembered.

Alongside her studio practice, Anthony has spent more than two decades building educational programs, exhibitions, and community-centered initiatives that expand access to the arts. Her leadership has helped shape institutions, mentor emerging artists, develop sustainable systems, and create spaces where creativity becomes a lifelong practice rather than a privilege.

Anthony’s artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver’s Octopus Collection. Her work has been exhibited nationally and is held in numerous private collections.

She is currently creating Organic Tarot, a 78-card hand-collaged tarot deck and accompanying memoir that intertwines mythology, autobiography, botanical symbolism, and the archetypal journey of transformation. The project reflects the central thread running throughout her career: that art is not simply something we make—it is a way of understanding ourselves, preserving what matters, and leaving a map for those who come after us.

http://www.tyaanthony.com
Previous

Radical Reimaginings | IN PRINT W/ Lorna Simpson!

Next

Untitled: Creative Fusions At Home