Volume II, Issue II Available for Pre-Order Now
AS A POET, THERE ARE TIMES I BECOME EXHAUSTED WITH LANGUAGE AND STRUGGLE TO PIECE TOGETHER ALL THE RIGHT WORDS TO SAY WHAT I WANT TO SAY. Exploring paper as opposed to script provided an alternate route to engage in art when self-expression felt elusive. My very first collage titled “How To Build A Prayer With No Words”, was how I taught myself to speak without uttering a sound.
Collaging is my way of archiving a practice that may soon be obsolete. As our digital society pushes ever forward towards a paperless culture, continuing the art of meticulous cut and paste is both preservation and appreciation of its aesthetic nature.
I’m inspired by many things, the first being the essence of collaging itself. It’s less about what you create from nothing but ratherwhat you’re able to cultivate from what’s already there. Living in a white supremist system as a Black body is to be in constant resistance against all that endeavors to smother you. Each piece I craft is a rearranging of the world and all its pieces until what remains is something soft, and filled with all the necessary components to sustain black life. The second is something I call Black Dreamscapes. As a Black queer and trans artist, what is most sacred to me are my dreams. The sort of dreams that can never be deferred because I do not live in a world that can realize them. Dreams that transcend space, time and circumstance. Dreams that are naked and unbound. My work in Black Dreamscapes is an effort to articulate these visions and invite the black collective to dream with me.
THE COVER PIECE “BEHOLD! THE FLOODGATES OF HEAVEN” IS AN ODE TO BLACK JOY, GRANDMAMAS WITH POT STIRRIN’ ARMS, AND THE LANDS WE SO TENDERLY STEWARD. I have seen floodgates in many a young boy or girl living out the fullness of their youth amongst friends, dancing in rivers that are safe to drink. And what is Heaven if not the miracle of a grandmama who can fix a meal out of broken rice? Stolen from our lands to work in foreign fields, we nurtured these grounds as if they were our own, cultivating death until it grew life. My work is not creating something new, it is simply a reflection of the beauty that is already there.
