In my work, I explore the mask of personhood—how it forms, how it is worn, and how it shapes the way we move through the world. From this emerges Real, an orangey-brown humanoid stripped of hair, ears, irises, and often clothing. She embodies the arrival and deconstruction of self: the tension between who I want to be and what is expected of me.
Real moves between inner thought and physical reality, parsing ideas of Black womanhood through questions of performance, femininity, sexuality, endurance, and hypervisibility. Though these subjects can be heavy, play and absurdity help me metabolize them.
My current series, Black Suburban Girl, looks backward at what made Real: Black girlhood in predominantly white spaces, domesticity, coming of age in the early 2010s, family legacy, and the quiet beauty of New Jersey suburbia.

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