Thesis Exhibition: March 1-4, 2017

Opening Reception : March 3, 6-8pm

Artist Statement

Historical research serves as a tool to unearth forgotten narratives. Narratives about the liminal spaces occupied by those whose existences were illegal due to anti-miscegenation legislation and sentiment for the majority of this county's history. This research is contrasted against the current commodification of black and brown bodies as tokens to be used by institutions to projected images of diversity, inclusion, and equity. Where the American project of inclusion is intentionally used to reinforce respectability politics and notions of the helpful model minority as a guide on the road to racial equality.

The work seeks to explore what is lost when inclusion is used to deflect further investigations into the present state of blackness and whiteness in America. When inclusion is used to erase the links of present trauma to historical trauma. This process is an ongoing investigation into this country’s legacies of exclusion and erasure. The work struggles with the question: how to exist when your existence is linked the historical truths that you were never supposed to exist or survive?