ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice as a multi-disciplinary artist is hinged on the personal, socio-political, historical, and cultural rubrics of exile, migration, and the marginalized, my positionality as a queer person of Afropean and Caribbean heritage. But what I create and say is not always in context and congruent with the specificity of the place and history where I was born: Petite Martinique, which is the smallest sister Isle of Grenada, situated in the archipelago of the Grenadines between Saint Vincent and Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. My perception of culture and history and representation as such is always shifting, what Édouard Glissant refers to as “Rhizomatic Identity”, using the Rhizome plant as a metaphor and the principle behind the “Poetics of Relation” in which every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other. However, the emotional rupture, longing, and memory around my past and where I am from linger as a strong current and the locus of my creative practice. Since my earliest years, growing up on the island, my imagination was nurtured by rituals and traditions connected to my Afropean heritage that are distinct to these tiny islands. By contesting the division between the realm of memory, the realm of personal experience, and historical archives, my works reference and mine colonial, postcolonial, and post-modern as a form of resistance and interrogation of historical, political, and contemporary social systems. It creates an arena in which content and form are conflated and reinterpreted.
I source images from the media, texts, and historical archives, and the ephemera, in my mixmedia paintings. The process of reworking, layering, and extracting helps me to expand on these sources; memory, etc, whereby they become other, more than just “news headlines” or the “past” but a recollection of a time and place in history. To paraphrase Rauschenberg, “The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.” The possible seems true and the truth exists, but it has many faces and alternate endings.
My aesthetics of filmmaking and installation have evolved into autofictional, experimental, and essay films as modes of self-narration, understanding, and penetrating the subject and collective; the self/ the other.
My studio and process are also a place of an ongoing exhibition and installation of the sort for memory and projections. Thematically interrelated materials are always on display as an act of meditation and inspiration: newspaper clippings, text from poetry, music, found objects, etc.
SELECTED SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 - Greatness Reveal: The Art of African Americans from the Butler Collection, Curated by Dr. Louis Zona, and Dee Banks, The Butler Institute of Arts, Ohio
2024 - Seeing Is Realizing There Is Always More to See, curated by Sharon Kendrick, The Elizabeth Foundation For The Arts, New York
2024 - I Threw Myself in A Concrete Mixer - Gallatin Galleries, New York University
2023 – A League Of Nations, Art Students League, curated by Ksenia Nouril, PhD, New York
2023 – Cugoano 250: Visualising Britain’s Black Past, curated by Ekow Eshun, Saint James Church, Piccadilly, London
2023 - Invisible Bodies, The HUB-Robeson Galleries, curated by the Border Gallery and Emireth Herrera Valdés, Penn State
2023 – Eulogies and Palimpsests, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio - Solo Exhibition
2023 – New Voices from Maine in American Art, Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine
2022 – Eulogies, Moss Galleries, Portland, Maine - Solo Exhibition
2022 – Palimpsests: Tales Spun from Sea and Memories, 59th Venice Biennale - Grenada National Pavilion
2021 - The Ocean and Interpreters, Curated by Caryl Lvrisse-Crochemar and Takamori Nobuo, Hong Gah Museum Taipei, Taiwan
2019 – Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap, 58th Venice Biennale - Grenada National Pavilion
2019 – Ebsploitation, curated by Ebony L Haynes, Martos Gallery, New York
2017 – Divided States of America, curated by Alison M. Gingers, Stuart Comer, and Ariella Wolens, LGBTQ Center, New York
2017 – New Yorkers Against Guns, curated by Candice Fortin, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, New York
2017 – Queer Geographies, Bric Arts, New York
2016 – Truth is Contrary, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York - Solo Exhibition
2015 – Fin de Dialogue, Camac Centre D’Art, France - (traveled) Solo Exhibition
2014 – National Academy Museum and School, New York
2013 – The Self/The Other, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York - Solo Exhibition
2010 - Mythos - Andre Zarre Gallery, New York - Solo Exhibition
FILM, PRODUCTION DESIGN, CURATION
2023 – Unmoored: Deconstructing The Narratives of Self/The Other, Moss Galleries, Portland, Maine - Curator
2016 – Lyle Ashton Harris : Uma Vez, Uma Vez, 2016 Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil - Art Director
2017 – We All Stumble, film commissioned by the Robin Hood Foundation, directed by Michael Marantz - Production Designer
2016 – Verizon: Innovative Learning, Directed by Michael Marantz - Production Designer
2015 – Tri, feature film directed by Jai Jamison -Production Designer
2015 – Mary Komosa: City of My Dreams, music video, Warner Music, Inc. (MTV European Music Award for Art Direction and Design) - Production Designer
2014 – Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, documentary directed by Thomas Allen Harris - Production Designer
2012 – Robbery on The Champs Elysées, directed by Donna Vermeer - Production Designer
2004 – A Lover's Discourse, adapted from text by Roland Barthes, directed by Donna Vermeer - Production Designer
RECENT LECTURES, SYMPOSIA, & SCREENINGS
2023 - Encountering Children of Empires, Culzean Castle, Scotland - Key Note Speaker/Symposium
2023 - Palimpsest: The Journeys of 18th-Century Abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano, Georgian House, Edinburgh, Scotland - Screening and Panel
2023 - Art, Identity and the Global South, Cleveland Art Institute, Ohio - Screening and Panel
2023 - Material and Memory, The Art Students Leauge, New York, Screening and Lecture
2022 - At Home: Artists in Conversation, Yale Center For British Art, New Haven, Connecticut - Screening and talk
2022 - Transiting The Queer Uncommons, York Unversity, Summer Institute, Toronto, Canada – Key Note Speaker/Symposia
2021 - Master of Fine Art Lecture Series, School of Visual Arts (SVA) New York - Screening and Lecture
2021 - Second Eulogy: Mind The Gap, Brooklyn Museum, New York - Screening and Panel
2020 - Narratives of the Diaspora, NYU Center for the Humanities, New York - Screening and Panel
2019 - Second Eulogy: Mind The Gap, The Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM), Yale Unversity, New Haven, Connecticut, Screening and Panel
COLLECTION
The Butler Institute Of American Art, Ohio
Farnsworth Museum, Maine
National Academy Museum, New York
GRANTS & AWARDS
2024 — Creative Capital
2022 — 59th Venice Biennale - Grenada National Pavilion
2022 — Ford Foundation
2022 — Foundation for Contemporary Arts
2019 — 58th Venice Biennale - Grenada National Pavilion
2016 — Steward Family Foundation, Inc
2015 — Ténot Fondation Fellowship, Paris, France.
2015 — MTV European Music Video Award for Art Direction and Design
ARTIST RESIDENCY
2023 — Culzean Castle/National Trust for Scotland
2022 — York Unversity, Summer Fellowship
2015 –- Artist in Residence, Camac Centre D'Art, Paris, France
RECENT PUBLICATIONS & JOURNALS
2023 — NKA Journal Of Contemporary Africa Art, Duke University Press
2022 — Milk Of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennale Catalog
2021 — L’Atlante dell’Arte Contemporanea
2019 — May You Live In Interesting Times, 58th Venice Biennale Catalog
TEACHING APPOINTMENT
2020 — Present - Lecturer, Directing and Projection Design, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
2020 — Present Visiting Lecturer, NYU Steinhardt, New York
EDUCATION
1995—1997 - Art Students League of New York, Studio Art
1998—2000 - National Academy Museum and School, Studio Program, NY
2004— Sorbonne, Paris, France, Languages et Civilizations
2005—2007, New School University, Media, and Film Studies, MA
2008—Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, Summer Intensive, Film Directing