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.
       
     
Memory and Meaning / Sculpture & Installations
Bitch/Bitch? serigraph on paper 2019. This work critiques the casual, flippant use of a denigrating term in black colloquial expressions. The appropriate use of the word bitch—referencing a female dog—is paired with a photograph of the abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The image forces the viewer to consider the moral implications of applying the word to women as well as to animals, particularly when that person is a venerated figure like Ms. Tubman. It is indicative of the misogyny inherent in some strains of black vernacular common in nihilistic expressions of hip hop culture.
       
     
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