My art practice allows me to use the canvas to explore Earth-centered concepts that remind Black people of our history of resilience.
Behind My Work
The collages I create showcase layered and color-shifting patterns, nature, and elements found within the African diaspora. I use them to tell Black stories lost in time through disenfranchisement and encode blueprints for a liberated Black future. My process involves story gathering and using my body to pose for the elements of the story. After painting the base canvas, I add the images I take, materials I grow, and upcycled objects to bring each story to life.
My vision for the future influences my art practice and includes centering innovative approaches to building community resilience. I imagine technology that calls on ancestral knowledge of the earth while accounting for the necessary adaptations we’ll need to make to live on this climate evolving planet. On the bodies of the people featured, and within the worlds they live in, are adornments created from metallic and iridescent materials. While these shapes present as jewelry, I am depicting bio-integrated technology that gives the wearer the equipment and ability to adapt to the environment. For example, what if your ring was the control for your teleportation device or you could clip an air purifier into your nose like a septum piercing? What if our earrings allowed us to communicate telepathically or across languages and our beaded sunglasses allowed us to see visions of new worlds?
My experience as a Detroiter has shaped my work. Around the city, you see sculptures created from found objects on street corners and old houses. I am inspired by artists in Detroit and across time who honor the tradition of using what is available to keep creating. Where others see junk collecting on the corners, I see my city as the ultimate place to turn scraps into art and spaces to cultivate community. Looking through the rubble to create art is a theme echoed across the diaspora, and my experience as a Detroiter is what unites me with artists everywhere who use their craft to call forward a future with love, liberation, and freedom at the center.
My passion for my art practice and motivation to create comes from a deep well of love for my city, and a desire to disrupt systems that keep my community at a disadvantage. Alongside my work to physically create resilience in this city through sustainable design, my art practice allows me to use the canvas to explore Earth-centered concepts that remind Black people of our history of resilience and inspire the continued march toward freedom.
Community Impact
As an artist and community caregiver, I believe that my work should stand to disrupt systems that cause harm, and call forward visions of liberation for my community and beyond. In my 9-5, I work to enact policy changes that encourage food sovereignty in disadvantaged communities. In addition to this, I co-own an earth-based design agency where I blend ancestral and innovative technology in order to create sovereign and sustainable futures. Through the agency, I own an urban farm where I grow free food for the neighborhood, flowers for market, and fibers and dyes for artists in Detroit and for my own practice.
My work as an artist is an expression of my work in the community. I create from the stories of Old Detroit told to me by my neighbors, the dreams of New Detroit developed through the present struggles and joy that coexist here, and my role in the struggle to mend the connection to Earth that Black people have. Right now, I use the outdoor space at the farm to host community gatherings and workshops focused on reconnecting with nature while using found and grown materials to create art. I deeply believe in the power of dreaming of freedom and work with a mixed population of elders, young adults, and children, all wanting to turn their dreams of community liberation into realities we can touch. My artwork tells the story of my people, what we have survived, and what we can and will create with love and liberation at the center of our world. I believe that my work serves to inspire the people in my community in Detroit to dream big and use what we have as a collective to fully realize these big dreams.
I hope to continue to inspire my community with my art work and my passion for keeping creativity alive amongst the struggle. I believe that the innate creativity alive within the Black community has gotten us this far and will ultimately free us. As I grow as an artist, I want my art that is rooted in community to inspire people across the globe to jump outside the realm of perceived possibility and orient their minds towards creating things unheard of, especially when freedom is on the line. As I work to push the boundaries of my creativity, I hope my unrelenting spirit inspires people like me to pursue their art practice and use their creativity to change the world. I have studied Black artists in Detroit and beyond who use their work to create lasting change, and I believe that my work has the potential to do the same.