Hettie Inniss

Hettie Inniss is an artist based in London whose practice questions the stability of identity. By working from her involuntary memories Inniss takes a Proustian approach to making, focusing on the unexpected moments where our senses are stimulated and the mind transports us to familiar or eerily unknown spaces. She uses her awareness of the constructability of memories as a tool to look beyond identity in a binary way. Much like memory, identity also shifts. Both have the capacity for clarity, ambiguity and absence. There is no definitive. Her handling of the paint follows this principle. Paint can slip and fade and it can stand boldly or whispers quietly within the work. The senses aid her orientation of the materials; how does a memory taste, how does it sound, how does the application of paint reflect these feelings? This intimate practice allows Inniss to combat rigid ideas of representation, advocating for Black Fluidity as a more liberating way of being.

Inniss takes comfort in the unreliable, questioning our desire to seek absolutism. Articulating these vivid ideas through paint allows her creativity to thrive. Both figuration and abstraction intertwine. The canvas becomes a space of evolving openness and a place to constantly learn and unlearn. Inniss' paintings come with the promise of there being no definitive, that there is always room for something to shift and a hope that its viewers find something different every time they view it.