Ashley Cole

My work explores freedom and the complexities of identity through memory, inheritance, and lived experience. Rooted in Black cultural and artistic lineage, I consider freedom as both a personal and collective condition—something imagined, negotiated, and continually reclaimed.

Working primarily with unstretched canvas, interior paint, acrylic, oil pastel, wood stain, and found materials, I use abstraction to translate experiences that often exist beyond language. Layering, gesture, tension, folds, stains, and exposed material become ways of exploring the body, memory, resistance, and release.

Music, family history, and inherited objects often serve as points of departure. I transform familiar materials into sites of reflection and abstraction, allowing personal memory to intersect with broader histories and cultural traditions.

Across my practice, I return to questions of freedom and becoming: What does it mean to make space for oneself? What can be reclaimed, reimagined, and made new? Through material, movement, and abstraction, I create work that considers the relationship between history and possibility.

Brooks College — Fashion Design, 2002

Resonance — Solo Exhibition, Caira Moreira Projects, Los Angeles, CA, 2026

Remains of What We Hold — Solo Residency/Exhibition, Joyce Soul & Sea, Los Angeles, CA, 2026

Band of Vices — Group Exhibition, Los Angeles, CA, 2026

No Faces — Curator/Group Exhibition, Gallery 90220, Los Angeles, CA, 2024

Syncopation — Group Exhibition, London, UK, 2022