In my studio practice, I investigate the ways in which historic anti-blackness and anti-black violence are ingrained in the landscape and material culture of the American south. In particular, I seek to address the ways in which objects and materials in the south contain and inflict that violence, and how that violence causes those objects and materials to be experienced differently by white and black people. I’ve taken to thinking of this disparity of experience as an extension of the double-consciousness first described by W. E. B. Dubois into material culture.
By exposing the pervasiveness of anti-blackness within the material culture of the American south, I aim to expose the reality of anti-black violence and black intergenerational trauma as ongoing conditions, and seek catharsis for my own experience as a black person navigating a world built through and around the subjugation of my people.