PERFORMANCE

based in metal work, ceramics, and weaving

UN LIEN (A LINK)

2018 - 2019

~260 feet of hand made burlap rope, crocheted burlap mat, red clay, 12 human bodies

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I come from a family where religious disciples or the Baye Fall don't wear shoes. They do this in order to remain in constant contact with the soil. My soil, nourishes my experience and what grounds  my understanding of others is my family.

As a Senegalese American the physical separation from my home leave just my body as a means of linking me to my heritage. I use that body to activate and interact with history. This rope is symbolic of what ties people back to their origins, what ties them back to their own soil. Creating from and working with natural materials brings me that sense of place. I am investigating how history works through our bodies and ties us together and to space.

FED

Febuary - April 2019

70 lbs welded steel spoon, 55 porcelain tea cups, attendants (Maps Glover and Ashley Shey), rope, oat milk and honey

Americans are generally removed from the origins and production processes of
consumption. In our capitalist society, we generally forget that the convenience
of our daily lives relies on the labor and time of others. We overlook the people
whose bodies and minds are routinely oppressed and we are complicit in this
arrangement. FED investigates this systematic disconnect.

WHAT WE CARRY

April 2018

Two cement filled ceramic bullets, rope, ~26 miles

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A black American woman (Yacine Tilala Fall) and Palestinian woman (Areej Itayem) walked throughout the wards of D.C. based on a line that mirrors a piece of the Palestinian boarder. The transnational relationship between these two women is created by the oppressive governments in the U.S. and in Israel,  that view their children as disposable.
This performance in D.C. comes at a crucial moment for the world to see. While we walked through the streets of D.C., Palestinians in Gaza were demonstrating for their own lives. It is women that are at the heart and center of this issue. It’s every Palestinian woman’s right to defend her land and nation as it is every black woman’s right to defend herself and family in the name of resistance.

STRUNG

May 2017

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8 foot welded steel tripod, ~3 ft wide ceramic sphere, rope, audience members

STRUNG was an exploration of philosophy and agency within an audience. I was fixated on the philosophical presumption that the mind and body are separate. I forced my audience into a tense environment and essentially offered them the opportunity to hoist my body via steel tripod. The synchronicity of the mind and body reveals itself in the visceral and this was the reaction I intended to evoke from my audience.

PAINTING

WHITE SPACE, WHITE FACE

May 2018

 5 x 5 feet Oil on panel 

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Race is an aesthetic in this country and it is used in an ornamental fashion. Race in America erases the realities of ethnicity and heritage. This reduces integral aspects of identity to a simply a surface that can be ascribed or removed depending on the context. I am a black Senegalese American and while frequently inhabiting white spaces I find that the white experience is projected  on to my person as a means to make others more comfortable with my skin and its history. White spaces call for whiteness and as a person of color it’s this dissonance that I explore visually through this self portrait. 

FLESH & FORM

June 2017

Oil, charcoal, and graphite on wood panel and paper

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This series is an excavation of the body within figures and landscape. Looking at environments and thinking of flesh, blood, and organs, I remove our internal material and place it elsewhere.

FLESH & FORM

June 2017

Oil, charcoal, and graphite on wood panel and paper

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This series is an excavation of the body within figures and landscape. Looking at environments and thinking of flesh, blood, and organs, I remove our internal material and place it elsewhere.

PTHALO MEDITATION

January 2017

Two 4 ft x 4 ft wood panels, acrylic paint, matte medium, burlap hand made rope, and twine

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Tension and aggression that lies within spirituality is translated through meditation in this work. I explore the use flagellation as a method to paint and to connect with the body mentally and physically. This was an investigation of motion; whipping my self and the work as a means of creating a body to body connection, and leaving the residue as the visual record of that interaction. I display this with a video of myself in the act of flagellating which is projected on to the piece.

DRAWING