Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

I am interested in the sounds our bodies (don’t) make when harmed and how those sounds are translated, erased, dismissed, or silenced. The biblical phrase, “fire shut up in my bones” comes to mind. What happens when harm enters the body? How does it exit the body, if it does? Can we undo the harm injected into the archive? If so, what does the body (the human) become? Can art be a portal for resurrection? What do the newly resurrected and re-membered sound like? The interdisciplinary aspect of my work allows me to dig deep into personal, spiritual, and historical archives to explore these questions. Through my practice of writing, painting, collaging, and dance, I explore ancestral modes of self-expression erased from or disfigured in the archives. In a way, what emerges is akin to what I believe it means to heal and be set free.

While at Headlands

While at Headlands, I will be exploring the silences that result from harm (e.g., geopolitical and inter/intra-personal). Surrounded by my collection of works from Toni Morrison, Lucille Clifton, Flora Nwapa, Pita Nwana, and others, I’ll be combing through archival material from the West African and its Diaspora to reanimate voices that have been silenced due to harms inflicted upon them and their memory. I’ll be collaging photos, my poetry and essays, with paint and found items from Headlands’ landscape as a meditative practice in memory-making.

Work Sample Links

1. When God Sat In Enugu / We Wondered Who We Were, About Place Journal, 2021.

2. God Answers, Berkeley Poetry Review (p. 106), 2021.

3. Ten Moments Last Summer, Berkeley Poetry Review (p. 107), 2021.

4. The Edge of Black, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, 2018.

5. wom mata*, Hayden’s Ferry Review (Issue 72), 2023.