I am a multidisciplinary artist and scholar who works with ceramics, collage, print, and text. My practice interrogates history and the libidinal economies of race and gender. I respond to the visual and symbolic dimensions of structural violence by drawing attention to where and how black women are absent and, occasionally, where and how we are present, so that I can reimagine these images. Much of my work relies on abstraction and the juxtaposition of forms, colors, references, images, and sometimes text that generate new meanings when placed together. By placing an emphasis on relationality, rituals, and care, my work redefines agency and power from a black feminist perspective. This work resists the representation of the “strong,” “resilient,” black woman and focuses instead on sensuality, vulnerability, interdependence, and redress.

 

In 2022, I created a ceramics series based on the figure of Sanité Bélair, a black woman who fought against Napoleon’s army during the Haitian Revolution. Drawing inspiration from portraits of Toussaint Louverture, I created pieces that imagined Bélair at rest, soft, and ready. I have a created and reimagined a tarot deck called the Disrupted Tarot using collage as a medium. I modeled the deck on and against the most popular deck in circulation in North America, the Smith-Rider-Waite tarot, which features 78 cards. Aside from the Star, Moon, and Sun cards, I renamed, reinterpreted, and recreated each card. The exhibit would feature all 78 original 4x6 collages, as well as large prints of select cards, and displays of tarot spreads with printed cards. The art I create reconfigures community and identity by working with fragments and trauma, but also pleasure and acts of rebellion, big and small. Placing black women at the center of these explorations, I work to show that other modalities of world-making are possible.