ARTIST STATEMENT: Maria-Lana Queen’s artworks continue to explore several common themes pertaining to life: connection and loss, faith and spirituality, family and kinship, and social/racial justice. Throughout her work, Maria-Lana uses several devices as metaphors: ladders to convey escapism or a means of escape to express that there is a way out from whatever difficulties we are facing; small stitch-like marks she calls “tracks” to remind us that with the choices we make each day we lay the path to our happiness or un-happiness; cages to convey the feeling of powerlessness to release ourselves from unexpressed hurt and incessant sentimental recollection that can keep us imprisoned in the past; crosses to
affirm the importance of faith and to acknowledge the burdens we bear; numbers to represent their importance as markers in our memory (i.e. she is one of ten children and eight remain); child-like, dark facial images representing African American children; colored bead images, representing Afrocentric beads, and rosaries; and DNA-like images to represent heredity, our shared humanity that on a basic level we are all connected, and to express her curiosity about her known and unknown genetic heritage. Most of her paintings are created as diptychs to reflect that she is also a fraternal twin.

In her recent works, titled “Black Lives Matter”, Maria-Lana paints of black children being born into a life of innocence, however, given the color of their skin they won’t necessarily have a voice or be seen in society. For her, the movement is paving a way for generations to come, so that they will hopefully be protected and removed from racial injustice.