My work shifts through moments of grief, macabre, death, love, racism and compassion. Pulling on imagery from Jim Crow era advertisements and television shows of black women, specifically the Mammy and the pickaninny caricature. These perverse depictions, often referenced in the titles of the work, assert the importance they have on popular culture. By using these seemingly archaic deceptions as stand ins of contemporary blackness, I contemplate the preconceived notions audience members of a western society have about black femininity. In the work, these expectations and the reality of these experiences collapse in on each other. The work dives into the creation, dedication and maintenance of a perpetuated cultural mask shielding a black female identity from racist or protection against. The myth of this mask and the definition of it is questioned in the work. Whether it actually provides actual protection or if it creates the illusion or sensation of protection. Seen in works such as Pickinniy and the Axe, she wields an axe against an unknown figure in the distance. Asking the viewer to question if she can actually hold her own. What is this code switching mask? Is blackness more than its structural suffering?

 

The visual language of the work is gestural, expressive, and punchy. The use of medium and pearlescent pigments highlight the brushwork adding immediacy and energy to the work. Strong harsh lines sear into the paper. This complementary method supplements the stark straight foreword depictions of grief, depression, loss and pain. The work can be put in conversation visually and conceptually, with artists such as Kara Walker, Egon Schiele, and Kathe Kollwitz.

 

The work aims to deploy methods or moments of empathy. Viewer’s relationships to blackness, femininity and otherness may connect them to modes of empathy quicker. The work is interested in grief with imagery and representation in media and arts that black audiences will relate to. Cultural phenomena of caricatures or cultural consensus create space for speaking across histories but are not necessary to experience the work. The work aims to connect viewers to the figures by visually and emotionally appealing to a sense of humanity given to the figures. Seen in the detail, and perspective, as each figure feels to almost be in arms length of the viewer. You, as a viewer, peer into her world and worry as the Pickinnany lay there, unable to see the figure approaching in the darkness. The mixture of care, concern and unnerving unease replicates the emotion I experience as a black woman and want to transmit to audience members. The work resists the sensation of exoticism or tokenism or the ability to be a perfect answer to any question, these figures were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. As viewers walk away from this work, the work will hopefully stay with them and encourage them to start thinking through their biases or their identity.