I am learning to care enough about what I make.
To care enough about my voice, my expressions, my concerns, joys and pleasures.
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And so I began to work on an MFA degree at the School of Institute of Art and Design of Chicago. Just after spending 20 days finessing photography printing both in the darkroom and on archival paper as an art resident at Light Work.
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What is to be done at this moment? To listen, to make, to reflect, to research, to learn, to show and tell, to be….not all, not at the same time, but these verbs are orbiting around my practice.
In the make, I have started to sketch the light boxes that will become the Oratory of Orun series. I am re-prototyping as a way to research materials and refine what I want from them and what it wants to be. Same for the If He Change My name book that may become a Kente-Book.
What are the threads that stitch together the many bodies of work I have and am creating?
A non purist cosmology
Materiality of African Diaspora Spirituality
Ambivalence, concealment and visibility
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To make is to research, to research is to make.
Orisha-Tree and The Tree of the Orishas - photo as an ideological index in which I interfere to revoke and reclaim photography as medium to convey and non puristic African Diaspora visual discourse.
How can I display the co-authors of my art? (Azoulay)
Paying attention to connections between individual and collective culture as well as how they clash. Those confrontations manifest in white supremacy and capitalism.
In relation to this broader point of attention, I would add that my practical focus in relation to my art practice is guided by some specific questions: What are the implications of collapsing stories and cultures within an object? What role do photographs have in forging such collapse?
What Alternative, historic, legacy processes are for?
Research:
Fabric - the fabric store on Wabash
Aguilar. (2000). Mostra do Redescobrimento. Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.[1] Arqueologia = Archaeology -- [2] Arte : evolução ou revolução? : a primeira descoberta da América = Art : evolution or revolution? : the first discovery of the Americas -- [3] Arte afro-brasileira = Afro-brazilian art -- [4] Arte barroca = Baroque art -- [5] Arte contemporânea = Contemporary art -- [6] Arte do século XIX = 19th-century art -- [7] Arte moderna = Modern art -- [8] Arte popular = Popular arts -- [9] Artes indígenas = Native arts -- [10] Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha = Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha -- [11] Imagens do inconsciente = Images of the unconscious -- [12] Negro de corpo e alma = Black in body and soul -- [13] O olhar distante = The distant view -- [14] Versão abreviada.
What were the discourses 22 years ago about the artists and about politics of identity in Brazil?
Jones. (2013). The non-library. Dead Letter Office, BABEL Working Group.
I am clashing this notion of the Non-Library or the New Library with my own collecting and archiving practices and how the materials and objects will be then collapsed together, collaged together in a non deterministic manner.
Golden. (2010). Making handmade books : 100+ bindings, structures & forms (1st ed.). Lark Crafts. But maybe my book will be a Kente-Book?!!!
