Artist Statement

I create work to ignite conversations about identity and all its beautiful nuances. I use hair as the driving force behind my materials as well as body gestures, the grid, media and brand images, personal images, and color as tools to drive discussion.

Hair for me is important because it is more than just the strings on our bodies. It has an important place not only in identity but also culture, religion, and politics thought history into the present day. My hair was a contributing factor in navigating a tumultuous time in my life. I am a biracial woman. I was born into a family where no one looked like me. I also had no one to share with me the values of the race that I am socially assigned. My catalyst for my ongoing research about race and gender was sparked by my transfer from private education to public school. I was suddenly integrated into an environment where race mattered, where before it had never been an issue.

I became very interested in what blackness was. I needed to survive in my newly assigned culture group. I turned to media and magazines to find information on black culture and how I was supposed to behave as a Black female. In all the media it was very clear “black” was different from what I was. I was concerned and became obsessed with understanding my newfound identity.

The black figure performing throughout history, in various spaces interested me, especially as a form of capitalization. As history, progressed women made more of a central figure in the commercial world. The female form has a long history of commodification. At the root of the black female stands the historical “Venus of Hottentot.” Now in the 21st century, the position has been opened to almost all women regardless of race.

The commercialization of the female figure has evolved through time but blackness has a history of being fetishized. I read psychology and sociology to understand more about the structures of power and fetish. I began to draw connections between the magazines I was looking at as a teen and these power structures. In real-time, the power that came with the feminine and sexual images were flipping, and I adopted the grid as a visual component in my work.

My use of color, light, and gradient explores the positive and negative aspects of the use of language around race and color. It also touches on spirituality and what type of hierarchy color can inform.