Talking with Desmond Beach is one of those moments where you immediately clock that you’re in the presence of someone who has always known their calling. Born in Baltimore and now based in New York City Desmond doesn’t talk about becoming an artist because frankly that was never up for debate. Art has been there since childhood not as a hobby but as a first language. Before small talk before explanations before all the polite ways we learn to package ourselves art was how they spoke.
When I asked why they started making art Desmond basically shrugged in the most spiritually grounded way possible and said they always have. They can’t remember a time when they weren’t making something and honestly same child energy just with way deeper wisdom. Over the years the work has evolved expanded and gotten more layered but the impulse hasn’t changed. It’s still about saying the things that don’t sit comfortably in sentences.
As they got older art stopped being just expression and started being survival. Healing too. Their practice pulls from stories held in bodies quilts churches and family rituals the kind of stories that don’t always get archived but somehow never disappear. Desmond’s work lives right at the crossroads of storytelling ritual and spiritual inquiry and it’s rooted in the belief that art can do more than hang quietly on a wall. It can care for people. It can witness. It can actually hold a community.
During Art Week Miami Desmond presented Hush Arbors a solo exhibition and ritual installation at SCOPE Art Fair and let’s be clear this was not your average booth moment. The space was transformed into a contemporary hush harbor drawing from the hidden spiritual spaces enslaved Africans created for prayer resistance and survival. In other words history spirituality and resistance showed up and took up space unapologetically.
Throughout the week Desmond performed ceremonial blessings and gestures inside the installation because of course they did and also gave an artist talk on the main stage at SCOPE where they spoke about ancestral memory ritual and art as communal healing. Watching people move through the space you could feel it working on them quietly and deeply. This wasn’t art you scroll past. This was art that asks you to slow down sit still and maybe reckon with something.
Desmond Beach isn’t here for decoration. They’re here for remembrance healing and a little bit of holy disruption and honestly we could all use more of that.
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