Letitia Huckaby

Carita Letitia Huckaby (née Jenkins, born 1972) is an American photographer who creates multimedia artwork combining photography and textiles to depict both family narratives and African American history.

The mixing of materials to reveal historical topics is exemplified by her 2015 Bayou Baroque exhibit honoring the nuns at the Sisters of the Holy Family Mother House in New Orleans, Louisiana. The pieces show nuns photographed in front of bed sheets with intricate floral patterns, presenting black women with the same solemn compositional weight as that shown in older master religious paintings. At the same time, the works echo the flowered backgrounds of Kehinde Wiley’s contemporary portraits, but bring a domestic twist to the flat plains.

Huckaby was one of the artists selected by independent curators to participate in the 2013 Texas Biennial, which showcases "the best emerging and established visual artists in Texas."

She has exhibited at the Dallas Contemporary; the Galveston Arts Center in Galveston, Texas; Renaissance Fine Art in Harlem, New York; the McKenna Museum in New Orleans; and the Dallas African-American Museum. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, the Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Huckaby has also created public art projects, including a piece along the Trinity river in Fort Worth at the 4th street trailhead, one at the Ella Mae Shamblee branch library in Fort Worth, and an installation of glass panels at the new Highland Hills branch library in Dallas, which reveals silhouettes of community members above the library’s main entrance.

She has also given public lectures at the Fort Worth contemporary Arts Center and the Dallas Contemporary.

Huckaby earned a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma in 1994, a BFA focusing on art photography from the Art Institute of Boston in 2001, and an MFA in photography from the University of North Texas in 2010. She is married to painter Sedrick Huckaby.