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West Africa Photo Collage series to be first exhibited as part of the exhibition, Multiplicity:
Blackness in Contemporary American Collage at The Frist Museum in Nashville, TN Sep
15–Dec 31, 2023 | Ingram Gallery.

 

In this series, I dissect photos I took during my 2021-2022 trip to West Africa (Benin, Nigeria,
Togo) and reorganize the elements to create new images of landscapes that are hybrids from
the three West African nations. The new images are representations of how I experienced the
landscapes as I moved through the region. I documented construction machinery,
development and underdevelopment, failed/incomplete construction projects, vehicles,
open-air entrepreneurial ventures, hand-made objects, vegetation, and people moving
through these spaces. The new images created highlights direct impacts of European
colonialism and neo-colonialism on the physical, political, and psychological landscapes of
the region. They also are reflections on pre-colonial demarcation of space, where culture,
land and politics converged and overlapped in other ways.
At the moment I am keeping them at 5 x 7 inches. At this scale they relate to the history of
tourist photographs, and postcards and their roles in shaping ideas and perceptions about the
“other” - in this case, Africa.
 

Spirit travel through time and space as we, people of the sun, have always done.

 

All photos of this series combine self portraits edited to render the body in motion and superimposed in landscapes photographed on location (Serengeti, Zanzibar, etc.) and combined with sourced images of the sky. (except no.1 which uses a sourced image for the location)

A collaboration with Kwesi Abbensettes. 

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Photographed on location in Jersey City with lace fabric. We each have been working with the original images independently deriving to new meaning.

This series was created during my time at the Fresh Milk International Artist Residency program, 2017. The residency is situated on what was formerly Willoughby's Plantation, circa 1660, in Saint George's Parish, Barbados. 

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The series is a reflection on the enslaved Africans and their descendants who once lived, labored, and died on this land. 

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