Visual Essays
Dreams
Inspired by a dream of my grandfather who passed away 7 years prior
A tribute to the life my grandfather lived and the joy he shared with his wife of 50 years
Small Details of Humanness
Inspired by Susana de Sousa Dias’s Luz Obscura, which explores the space between light and dark
As she was moved by a photo for her work, I searched for and observed “small details of humanness” before creating a series of infinitives of what it means to be human and with what humans do.
America The Not-So Beautiful
Inspired by Crystal Marie Fleming’s lecture and book How to be Less Stupid about Race during the Black Film Center/Archive’s fall 2018 series, “Before Representation,” at Indiana University Bloomington
Gary: Why Does Everybody Talk About It in the Past Tense?
Inspired by Katherine McKittrick’s essay “Plantation Futures”
“Plantation geographies”: any site where the logics of hierarchy, control, industry, commodification, racialization, or another aspect of plantations are at play
“Gary: Why Does Everybody Talk About It in the Past Tense?” explores memory, place, and anti-Blackness. With generations of my family growing up in Lake County, I know the history of Gary, white flight, and encoded racist language. Through the overlay of text over maps, I annotate the visual with comments from newspapers and online packed with racist assumptions and place it alongside McKittrick’s analysis of Black geographies to reveal ongoing plantation geographies.
Dakota Access Pipeline: A Story of Spatial Politics, Mapping, and Migration
