I think biography is a necessary and vital way to begin working. The fact that people want to reject personal history, I find to be kind of cold. I feel like it’s something about wanting to not own up to their own narrative, especially in relationship to a body like mine. It’s like, “no, we don’t want to know what your story is because that means we have to recontextualize our own.”¹

I don’t want to shift or morph outside of my body. I’m actually really into my body. I love being Brown. I love the color brown. It’s such a diverse color; it has so many associations, like dirt and mud and coffee and chocolate. Do I want those associations? How do I feel about them? Brown is such an inherently complex color that I feel like I wish more people would approach it. I think one thing that comes with abstraction — especially Blackness and abstraction² — is that there has always been this strange interplay throughout history, of when do you go so far that you are no longer the subject of the work?

I am definitely very emotional with my work. It’s not sappy; it’s not like boyfriend art. But it does come from an emotional place in regards to family. I’m obsessed with everything inside of the house. I did a performance that referenced the carpet and layout of the upstairs bedroom of my dad’s house, in the room that I stay when I visit him. Or I made works a year or two ago out of popcorn ceiling and paint — the main impetus was because in my grandma’s house, she had a popcorn ceiling, which is a common feature of Southern homes. I see it almost like a little piece of skin; it has actually started to look more like a shell, which I’m super into. I like working with a material that you don't know necessarily how the shape will occur. For me, it has something to do with texture — like the materiality of the popcorn ceiling from my grandma’s house — I feel like the textures are related to what the objects are trying to communicate.

For my thesis, scale was really important. I have never really done a large installation of this sort. I just have an apprehension towards large sculpture, especially for myself. A challenge became how I could play with scale, without making a large set of objects or a large object. Large drawings felt a little bit weirder — also because they are directly applied to the wall. They seem like they are almost consuming the wall itself. I have been drawing for a little while but it had never been a focal point of my practice until quarantine, because then I was able to really focus and challenge myself by making things bigger.

I started making a lot of other drawings, very much like zoomed in portions of a petri dish or tiny little organisms. I’ve also been obsessed with this idea of zooming in and zooming out. This is going to sound a little Afrofuturist, or kind of like speculative science fiction: I have started to wonder exactly what particles animate my energy or my body. I’m not trying to recreate some sort of science, but I’m just thinking maybe I’m actually composed of flowers, or I’m composed of pink. And all that is happening within me, and it is a way to establish a sense of self.

As far as how the drawings interplay with the cushioncontainercapsules — which is what I call them: I think that's kind of one of the more complex parts about how I’m working now. I feel like everything — sculpture, drawing, performance — sort of operates on its own, but still underneath the same totality. This isn’t anything new — this is from research into African religions,³ where they talk about how everything is interconnected. I understand the works to be disparate in their own right, but then also connected to something larger, which is the practice itself.

The crux of my work is to always be as honest as possible. I feel like when you stop being honest, you can almost feel it — just say what you want to say. I’ve been wary of artistic speak. There is a time and place for a certain language, but I also think that it can be exploited. I think about: how do I talk like a normal person and still say what I’m doing.

I was reading about the idea of the alma mater, which translates to “nourishing mother” in Latin. I feel almost like I came back to school looking for another home, looking for another place to find space. I’ve definitely been vibing off the idea of homes and incubators, and spaces to incubate into. And now, once I get out of here, it is going to be a little tricky to find that again. But I'm excited, because then it will be on my own terms. This can be a moment of being able to cut ties, of institutional support — but also cut ties between origin point, of always trying to be obsess over how I came to know this, or do this. I feel like any time you are in your late 20s, you start to think⁴: what were they trying to teach me, and do I need to take any of that with me as I go forward?

Songs of inspiration:
Spaces and Places by Donald Byrd
Love Is Everywhere by Pharoah Sanders
Binz by Solange

A sincere thank you for guiding me and assisting me through this work to Joe Cottrell, Jesse “Granny” Clayborn, Veronica “Momma” Clayborn, Courtney Clayborn, Kirk Clayborn, Ramonda Clayborn, Miles Jackson, Vihanga Sontam, Brittney Leeanne Williams, and Oscar Chavez.

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