Sasha-Loriene McClain is a Maryland-based interdisciplinary artist whose works are deeply rooted in her inner-child healing journey and quest to recontextualize home. Born to Liberian immigrants, Sasha-Loriene explores mixed media figuration and collage to create spaces that transcend conventional boundaries of time and location. Her artistic practice serves as a powerful vehicle for African diasporic healing and empowerment, weaving storytelling and artmaking into a seamless tapestry of expression. Drawing inspiration from family photographs, personal mementos and textiles, and art forms from childhood experiences shared with her late mother, such as collage, crochet, and sewing, Sasha-Loriene carefully preserves generational narratives. These memories form a living archive that will eventually become stories for her daughter, creating a continuous thread between past, present, and future generations. Through her exploration of play and discovery, she unravels ancestral memories, navigates personal loss, and transforms oral traditions into compelling contemporary works of art. Sasha-Loriene confronts and deconstructs childhood wounds by creating evocative works that spark nostalgia while guiding viewers to recognize and celebrate life's everyday joys. This thoughtful approach not only honors her own evolution but also provides context for understanding the world around her, expressing profound gratitude for the full spectrum of lived experiences.

Sasha-Loriene is a 2023 grant recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts. She has participated in artist residencies in Maryland and Michigan and exhibited in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, New York, Florida, and the United Kingdom. As the founder of Mahyue Studios, a community arts incubator centering healing, storytelling, and cultural exchange, and Black Girls Who Paint, a global movement supporting Black women and girl artists, Sasha-Loriene leverages her BA in Economics from University of Maryland: College Park and MPA in Public Management from American University to amplify her artistic voice and social-engagement on larger scales. Sasha-Loriene is a current MFA Candidate in Studio Art Low-Residency at Maryland Institute College of Art.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice is rooted in the recontextualization and rebuilding of home after loss. Since becoming a mother while grieving the death of my own, my work has reshaped into a search for how safety, belonging, and care can be cultivated from within when foundational anchors are gone. I create from the tension between absence and abundance - the ache of losing the woman who raised me and the luminous joy of raising my daughter. This duality shapes the emotional and visual language of my work.

At the center of my practice are three questions: How does grief reshape my understanding of home? What does it mean to mother myself while mothering my child? And how might art hold memory, lineage, and new life at the same time?

To pursue the answers, I work with deeply personal materials: family photographs, lived experiences, and inherited practices carried through the women in my lineage - crochet, sewing, and improvisational artmaking. I collage my mother’s fabric and other inherited textiles and objects to stay in conversation with her as my grief evolves. I create mixed-media paintings and assemblage that incorporate what she left behind, anchoring my commitment to materiality and sustainability while transforming each work into a site of intergenerational connection. Through layering, stitching, and reassembling fragments, I build compositions that honor her presence while holding space for healing as an act of remembering and reimagining.

My inner child, Mahyue, appears throughout the work as a recurring figure and signature, bridging past and present.  She often appears with balloons that symbolize hope, dreams, and memories as fragile, floating reminders of what we all carry. She holds the parts of myself that survived and are still seeking care and learning to trust joy again. Allowing her to move freely through my work creates space for viewers to reconnect with their own younger selves and reimagine their sense of home.

Ultimately, my practice is an offering to my daughter, to my mother, to myself, and to anyone navigating the complexity of loss and renewal. Through artmaking, I cultivate home within the body and the stories I tell, not bound by a physical place. I invite viewers to imagine the worlds we can rebuild when we let healing be both intimate and shared.

For all inquiries, please contact info@sasha-loriene.com.