A Boerum Hill artist has managed to flourish in the industry for decades by creating thought-provoking artworks.

Scherezade Garcia uses her platform to delve into complex issues.

She says her passion for art started at a young age.

"I start[ed] being interested in drawing. In kindergarten, I was the artist in my class," Garcia recalls.

Her family nurtured her creativity while growing up in the Dominican Republic.

"I do come from very powerful women, women that, for example, that were professionals before that was OK, or that they went to college when there were only two women in college, including my mother," she says.

Garcia dabbles in a little bit of everything, from painting to sculpture, to performance art and video animation.

"I love to play with the idea of beauty, you know, and also transform the idea of what beautiful is," Garcia says.

When looking at her work, one might notice a theme.

"All my figures are cinnamon color, canela, because I felt so connected to so many different communities and my skin is full of those colors. When you have a palette and you are in art class and you have a palette full of yellow, red, blue, -- everything. So if you mix all those colors, the outcome is brown,"

Garcia included that detail in a piece called "The Corona Altar" at Greenwood Cemetery during the pandemic as a tribute to loved ones who have passed. Her goal with all her work is to create platforms for conversation.

"This idea that I want the stories and the narrative to be provocative, but not in your face. So, people get a little bit confused, but they left the exhibition thinking," she says.

Garcia plans to continue making thought-provoking art that touches on subjects like colonization and politics.