My work is a journal,
an archive
that maps my journey towards
a reality where
my body is a safe space for me to live where
I’m not constantly displaced by structural violence where
I don’t fear the lynchmob (worksample 1,2,3) where
generational trauma doesn’t distort my intimate relationships(worksample 4, 5) where
social systems support my needs (worksample 6) where
colonization doesn’t determine my access
to knowledge about my lineages (worksample 7) where
I commune freely with my ancestors and spirit guides (worksample 8) where
I don’t translate, explain, make myself legible or digestible
to be seen as worthy of support and care where
I relax into the expansiveness of my being
My work is fiber based.
I’m thankful that fiber chose me. I love that we are simultaneously intimately familiar with and obliviously estranged from fiber. Some form of fiber—clothes, bedsheets, towels—is always next to our skin, growing from it even (hello hair!). Despite this intimate relationship we don’t know where it comes from, who makes it, how it’s made. We accept fiber as part of our daily lives without question or curiosity just as we do systems of social violence. Someone makes those too. Systems are accumulations of a set of choices repeatedly chosen by many people over some span of time. Cultures are systems, institutions are systems, communities are systems.
My works are systems.
I handcraft a thing repeatedly until I have a palette, a visual vocabulary of objects. Within my final compositions, accumulations of objects reads as single entities:
A 60 foot painting (worksample 4,5) is a singular undulating expanse of blue sky. As the viewer moves closer, it shapeshifts before their eyes. Over 700 hand-dyed, hand-embroidered cloth squares come into view, each inviting attention and care.
A sculpted flag (worksample 2) unfurls into an accumulation of 7200+ tiny nooses. In the viewer’s hand the noose transforms into a space for releasing embodied trauma.
My works is an offering
of finger pricked blood sacrifices
of time,
attention
presence
an ancestral channel opened
in service of birthing
systems where
we are all well
and well cared for
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