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Practice Makes Perfect: Artist Talk with Allison Bolah

The Storefront

Join resident artist Allison Bolah in an intimate conversation on her research, inspirations, and art practice.

The Fort Lauderdale Main Library's May/June 2025 Artist-in-Residence @ The Storefront is local artist and educator Allison Bolah. Her interdisciplinary practice draws on experiences in literature and photography; in installations of video, sound, and paper-based objects, Allison documents the ways that gesture and language are shaped into specific narratives. Themes of reflection – literal and figurative – are also a feature of her work and she plays with their ability to form and disturb ideas of self and place.

Like multi-disciplinary artist Saul Williams, I, too, am a student of the Black Arts Movement's school of thought that "art should serve a function, because the other side uses all of their art as propaganda." And, like many of my favorite artists and writers (Franz Kafka comes to mind), I insist -- not just out of necessity -- on working a day job beyond "the art world". In Metamorphose @ The Storefront, I explore the behind-the-scenes reality of a working working artist's 21st century studio practice.

Allison’s interdisciplinary practice draws on her experiences in literature and photography; in installations of video, sound, and paper-based objects, she documents the ways that gesture and language are shaped into specific narratives. Allison focuses on her work’s dialogues within her African Diasporic and other communities. Thus, she seeks opportunities to share her work in non-traditional spaces. Allison was born in Alberta, Canada and lives in South Florida. She received her MFA in Visual Studies from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

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