VIDEOS
Eternal Threads
March 2025
The Bishop Gallery
As part of the Eternal Threads group exhibition, Quiana Parks contributed a series of mixed-media works that reimagine Sankofa through the image of a Black woman—not as a bird, but as a figure turning her head to the past while standing firmly in the present. In Parks’ vision, Sankofa isn’t about nostalgia—it’s about reclaiming agency, revising memory, and choosing what to carry forward. Her works, created on paper and wood using oil pigment sticks, charcoal, and graphite, meditate on everyday Black womanhood: gestures, silences, inheritances. These are portraits of the unseen—rituals passed down not through words, but through movement, care, and survival. The woman who braids without needing to speak. The prayer said without asking for anything. The kitchen lit by morning light. Parks’ contribution to the show invites the viewer into a quieter kind of resistance—one rooted in tenderness, memory, and myth. By re-centering the Black woman as Sankofa, her work becomes both personal and ancestral, visualizing a lineage that knows exactly where it’s been—and where it’s going.
Chapter 10
October 2024
Cierra Britton Gallery
Chapter 10 is a visual meditation on transformation—an exploration of what’s shed, what’s sacred, and what we choose to carry forward. Across a new collection of mixed-media works, Quiana Parks moves through grief, empowerment, and spiritual reckoning with a steady hand and an open heart. The number ten marks both an end and a beginning—a closing of one life cycle and the ignition of another. In this body of work, energy is not lost but transmuted. Using oil pigment sticks, charcoal, pencil, and crystal-charged pigment on paper and wood, Parks creates portals where personal memory meets ancestral frequency. Malachite and Lapis—stones known for healing, transformation, and truth—are embedded into the material language of the pieces, guiding the viewer through layered dimensions of self-awareness. Water appears throughout the collection—not only as an image, but as a force. From the ocean to tears, water becomes a witness, a balm, and a reminder of what cannot be controlled but must be felt. This is spiritual work: messy, quiet, cracked open. The kind that holds both power and surrender in the same breath. Chapter 10 isn’t just a new beginning—it’s an initiation.
Parks & Rec
February 2024
Bric
Parks & Rec—a party series and cultural project created by Quiana Parks—transformed BRIC into a living altar for the Black dance floor, where memory, movement, and music came together as both archive and offering. Known for bridging art, sound, and community, Parks & Rec reimagines nightlife as a site of healing, storytelling, and resistance. The installation honored the party not just as celebration, but as ritual—where joy functions as protest and rhythm becomes record. Influenced by exhibitions like The Beat Goes On, curated by Derrick Adams at SVA Chelsea Gallery, the work echoed the spirit of Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage. Artists like Elia Alba, who created a church-like listening room in homage to Levan, and Kevin Beasley, whose sculptural sound works bend time and space, were key touchstones. The legacy of DJ Spooky’s sonic interventions and Tameka Norris’ raw performance-based storytelling also informed the emotional texture of the space. At BRIC, Parks & Rec blurred the line between installation and invitation. Using sound, visuals, and relics from parties past, the space pulsed with the frequencies of church basements, kitchen dance battles, corner speakers, and whispered prayers. It was part memory loop, part resistance, and fully a celebration of the spaces that raised us.
THE EMANCIPATION OF QUIQUI
October 2022
The Bishop Gallery
The Bishop Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of The Emancipation of Qui Qui, a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary and multi-hyphenated artist, Quiana Parks. Parks channels her life's lessons from past experiences and the people who inspired and guided her to her success. The exhibition opens on October 20th and runs through November 16th at The Bishop Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Expressed through 13 works, Quiana gives a glimpse into her most intimate moments like battling lymphoma, her family's influence, identifying as queer and her strong religious beliefs. This exhibition Emancipation of Qui Qui serves as a retrospective of her life, both the successes and the failures; the joys and the pain; the turmoil and the peace. Growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, Quiana was influenced by her mother, grandparents and their devout Christian beliefs. The spirituality that she developed as a child still plays an important role in her work today. The power and presence of a strong female also dominate Quiana's works. It depicts the significance of her mother and grandmother's role in her life. Quiana stated "With my grandmother's hand still in my life and as I grow wiser, I know to not only embrace the good in my life, but to also do shadow work", Parks is no stranger to adversity and has survived life's toughest battles such as surviving cancer, which led her to understand the importance of authenticity. This awakening would begin the evolution of Quiana Parks and ultimately lead to her Emancipation. When asked what she wants people to take away after seeing this show Quiana exclaimed, "I want a young person to walk in my exhibition and understand that failure does not mean the end. Painting is where God is leading me, so I have had to break away from other people's expectations for me and stand in my truth". This exhibition also serves as an ode to the Black experience, our spirituality, our legacy - as well as artistic architects such as Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hammons, Frida Kahlo, and Christian Marclay, to name a few. Quiana has poured herself into a body of work that is both layered, complex, and full of contradiction. A true sampling of life and her life's experiences painted in truth. Get acquainted with the resilient makings of Quiana Parks!
