Illiteration For Interpretation:
Reflecting on the purpose for an artwork.March 2022
Sisters: A Breakdown of Monolith [A Message From The Future] and Souls of Black Folk from the exhibition Black [Between The Lines]
Souls of Black Folk speaks to the past and future of Black expression, experience, and people by highlighting the personal path and ancestral inheritance of Black Americans. This is illustrated by utilizing a black monolithic pedestal with a receded surface layer bearing a window into the sculpture. The sculpture’s insides contain suspended sheets of acrylic being navigated by a single golden thread: an investigation of the unseeable and at times unknowable obstacles faced while living in Black bodies.
A network of strings representative of an ancestral plain where those who have paved paths for Black Americans to navigate reside. Each individual lot, containing a tree, diamond and person, is symbolic of those pioneers whose names have traversed time and space, arriving in context with their actions, deeds and accomplishments in a future present tense. The hearts suspended throughout the network devoid of a lot of land, or individuals to rest within them are symbolic of those that have contributed to our collective progression without being granted equal or proportionate merit. Their names and accomplishments, respectively, move through time attached to the larger conversation disconnected, separated, disembodied.
If Souls of Black Folk exists to present Black people as having a rich and colorful ancestral heritage not always placed within its proper or full context, Monolith [A Message From The Future] illustrates a future where their respective narratives arrive properly contextualized. A cubed metal frame fashioned with lights, illuminating the path of a singular narrative, rests atop a recessed pedestal. Within its recessed base lies the decommissioned and damaged glass ceilings, obstructions and obstacles of a collective past. Deactivated though they may be, their lessons echo and arrive into a new future.
Unlike Souls, the path depicted does not engage the obstructions, which suggests a collective ancestral history has passed through time in its full and proper context, offering a sense of self and communal preservation.
