Soup Coolers; 2019. Serigraph on paper; soup can, and resin. This work investigates a phrase commonly associated with the black vernacular tradition, particularly in the Southern United States. Referring to the relative size of the lips of people from the African diaspora, the term derives from the comedic, mythological notion that black lips are so large that they could cool a pot of soup with one blow. It is a brilliant example of linguistic inventiveness. What was once seen as a grotesque aspect of black physicality has been reinterpreted through humor, a powerful mechanism for survival. The soup can links the work to Andy Warhol’s pop art creations. In this iteration, it references the objectification, appropriation and commodification of the black body by the multi billion dollar, white dominated beauty care industry. White clients now flock to plastic surgeons to enlarge the size of their lips and buttocks. The shifting perception of an “ideal” standard of beauty now includes aspects of the black body devoid of the social consequences of blackness.
       
     
Memory and Meaning / Sculpture & Installations
H.N.I.C. serigraph on paper; 25 x 26 inches; 2018. H.N.I.C., is the acronym for the expression ‘Head Nigga in Charge.’ The term is widely used in certain segments of the black community to refer to African Americans in positions of authority. Historically it was used in a pejorative sense to ridicule token blacks placed in nominal positions of responsibility to reinforce an illusion of agency when power, in it’s material iteration, ultimately resided in someone else’s hands. I have used the phrase in this work, to link the past to the present by juxtaposing an image of myself as a slave driver in the first panel, and as a business man in the second panel. The hands resting on my shoulders suggest an enduring conflation of race and power.
       
     
Memory and Meaning / Drawings & Prints
Ibo Landing (conceptual drawing) pen and ink on graph paper
       
     
Memory and Meaning / Conceptual Drawings and Project Proposals
Blocked at Five Points Performance Film; photo montage; performance As the on-air host for the PBS documentary 37 Weeks: Sherman on the March-- which chronicles Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s “march to the sea”—I was absolutely astonished to learn that the buying and selling of human beings took place at Five Points MARTA Station in Atlanta, the symbolic locale where north, south, east, and west meet, and yet there is no historical marker or public indicator of any kind to honor those unknown souls who passed from auction block to plantation at the heart of Atlanta’s public transportation corridor. Equally troubling is that the Margaret Mitchell House, located less than two and half miles away, preserves the memory of the author of the celebrated novel Gone With the Wind which features a slave mammy as one of the central characters of the book. The juxtaposition of these two lived realities—one institutionalized and preserved; the other lost and forgotten—represents Atlanta’s inability to reconcile its present day identity with its troubled past. More specifically it is emblematic of a systematic attempt to control the historical narrative through a process of memory erasure. Blocked at Five Points aspires to arrest our predisposition to forget our past by drawing attention to slavery’s proximity to our present.
       
     
Memory and Meaning / Performances
Tight Packers A Depleted Harvest_2.jpg
       
     
Memory and Meaning / Artist cv
Performance still_Blocked at 5 Points_2017.jpg
       
     
Memory and Meaning / Artist Statement