Kaleeka Bond

Art is one of the most important elements of my life. Through art, I release emotions and express myself without verbal explanation.

My work explores the impingement of mass media by means of isolation in communication, stereotyping, and the loss of personal singularity, which inadvertently dominates the way we live.

Due to the influences of mass media, people often question their own judgment and live in boxes that isolate them from everyone else. As labels are placed on others, we take a step back in defining our own individuality and our ability to make accurate judgments on our own. I hope to increase social awareness of how people divide others into categories and live their lives in a mold that someone else has created. With labels comes separation, most commonly seen when public venues, such as Starbucks, slowly become places of solitude and privacy, where friendly greetings become unwanted annoyances. Because of this, there is an invisible barrier that we create for ourselves that causes us to question who we are and what we think of others. Not only do we isolate ourselves from one another, we have become co-dependent and bound to various sources of technology. As people live their lives they are contingent upon the use of machines to assist in activities, communication, and overall day-to-day function. Our future generations are born into a world in which simple things such as knowing how to calculate, talking to someone in person, or hand-writing a letter has become obsolete. We have lost our face-to-face connection. Because of this, technology has also created an invisible barrier between humans and nature. In the decision to focus my work towards issues that may be neglected or ignored, I hope to counter the effects of mass media with social awareness.

Kaleeka Bond was born in Virginia and grew up in Southern California. She received her BFA in 2006 and her MFA in 2008 from Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) in Laguna Beach, CA and has been exhibiting her work regularly for 18+ years. After obtaining her MFA, Kaleeka went on to teach drawing and painting at numerous colleges throughout Southern California. She currently teaches five classes and owns multiple businesses, while continuing to exhibit her work. Alongside her husband, Harith, Kaleeka owns and operates an apparel line, Adinkra Stitch.

Influenced by behaviors in society and the impingement of mass media, she hopes to counter the effects of these disconnections with social awareness through her artwork. When interviewed about her work, Kaleeka stated; “Art has a way of opening our eyes to things that we refuse to see. I want my work to compel people to see beyond the superficial and seek the profound, ultimately allowing them to live beyond what they think of as the obvious and understand that individualism and the ability to communicate shape the uniqueness of the world.”