Materiality & My Foraging Practice 2020
Materiality is the basis for my practices,as in materials that I collaborate with to create and also the material conditions that shape my life as a poor, chronically ill, Black, queer and trans person raised in the US south by parents from the US and Global South.My mother was a seamstress, quilter, broom maker, hand embroiderer and rodeo sports woman. We spent one day of every week organizing the fiber that grows out of my head, my hair. Through raising me in these practices my mother instilled in me a deep embodied knowledge around how to manipulate fibers. Hand stitch work, twining, braiding, knotting, quilting, weaving on the bias–or fish tailing as it is called in hair–these are all the foundation for my work. I gravitate towards materials like string, twine and rope that feel familiar in my hand because of my early training.
Additionally, a question that drives my choice of materials is: How can I honor the traditions in my lineages, while also honoring the land that I currently occupy? My answer: across all of my lineages people crafted with materials that were abundantly available in their immediate surroundings.
In the last four years I’ve taken the time to learn how to make my own materials–twine, cloth, dye, framework, etc– by hand using techniques that people in my lineages used before me, and using plants that the indigenous peoples who stewarded these lands used before me as well.
Conceptually, I’m making work as a way to think through my material conditions.
I’m crafting immersive installations, sculpture, and art objects to open up dialogue in my communities around this question: how can we build the necessary infrastructure to cultivate cultures of collective care where everyone has what they need to live with ease and thrive? What I make and the processes that I use both propose solutions or path forward.
I’m using twine from the horse farm that I work on to make sculptures out of miniature nooses to talk about the power of symbols, the power of people, and the possibilities that open up when we process our collective, embodied generational traumas.
I’m using indigo from the natural dye project that I am a part of to dye squares that I embroider by hand to talk about domestic work, the history of labor in the United States, how the labor dynamics that are the foundation for our interpersonal relationships and the US economy determine our ability to create sustainable social and economic infrastructures. Indigo, is one of the cash crops that was grown by Black folks in the US south, which is where I was born and raised. Indigo is also a keystone crop of tremendous cultural,social and spiritual significance for Yoruba people, my dad is Yoruba, I am Yoruba.
I’m foraging organic materials to make and craft masquerades, wearable sculptures that speak to the ways that our spiritual practices, craft practices, and cultural practices shape how we understand or do not understand ourselves to be a part of the natural environment, the global ecosystem and cycles of life.