Artist Statement

I grew up in a household reared by a set of parents who were not privy to issues that negatively affected the inequalities of the Black community due to the burdens and challenges they faced that demanded their full attention. My parents’ relationship to race, politics, and identity was rooted in surviving the crack crisis. Consequently, survival also consumed my thoughts until the age of 21 when I witnessed the nation’s reaction to Trayvon Martin’s murder. Up until that point, I had no real relationship to race and what it meant to not only the American project itself but also to the material experiences of black people around the world. I formed a deep interest in the history of black resistance, and what resisting meant and can mean to modern-day organizing for freedom.

My artwork not only provides social commentary about the oppressed response to state violence, it also provokes a deep reflection and critical analysis of moments and people in time who sacrificed a great deal for the sake of liberation. I’ve recently been inspired to reimagine what resistance and victory can look like alongside social plights that are continuously fortified and sanctioned despite the clear violence imposed on society.  While rooting my artistry in both a resistive and imaginative framework, I grapple with the following questions: “What does the past mean to the present?” and “What does the past mean to the future?” 

My pieces probe the depths of our historical consciousness to stylistically depict subjects and figures committed to movements for liberation and freedom. My work combines portrait with literary technique to provoke profound meditations on the interplay between (or dialectic of) race, domination, subjectivity, incarceration, resistance, agency, and liberty in the vivid animation of civil rights leaders, freedom fighters, and systems disrupters. 

My art pieces are most powerfully consumed in conjunction with visual mediums (video) and/or auditorial mediums (song). These elements of my work are essential to my process and serve not only as inspiration for my process of curating art pieces but also as additional entry points to spark curiosity from the consumer.  The interplay of these mediums throughout my catalog creates an immersive experience, and an opportunity to engage with the underlying perspectives and ideas that informed the visual pieces of artwork themselves.   

Bio 

I am a multi-medium artist from Watts, California who has dedicated my career to carceral work centered on education, justice, and transformation. My experiences programming in carceral institutions, both domestically and internationally, have deeply influenced the development of The Field—an organization I created to leverage the arts as a source of social-political education, healing, and community building. One of the core programs of The Field is The Story From Within (TSFW), which uses storytelling as a healing and pensive modality to help reawaken parts of one self that have been silenced by state violence—specifically the violence embedded in education, incarceration, and the criminal legal system.

At the heart of TSFW is the use of creative expression as a method for pedagogical engagement. By working with artists, activists, and advocates, we create entry points for discussions around identity, material conditions, community, and other sociopolitical topics that shape the experiences of the students we work with. Through engagement with music, reading excerpts, visuals, and other forms of art, students develop the skills to use a variety of artistic mediums for self-expression, self-regulation, and healing.

In addition to my work with The Field, I hold a Master of Arts in Social and Cultural Analysis from New York University (NYU). I am also a 2025 Create Change Artist-in-Residence at The Laundromat Project. Currently, I serve as the Director of Education and Curriculum Development at exalt youth, an organization in Brooklyn, New York, that supports students between the ages of 15 and 19 who are impacted by the criminal legal system.