I make work about the body and the ways that, through gesture and movement, people can tell stories. The movements I choose come from historic traditions of community building, martial arts, black vernacular dance, and other tasks that people build culture around. Through editing, cutting, and pasting these gestures, I create new forms that reach for an effervescent and poetic quality of learning, together with the hope that they offer others a schematic for new forms that react to the changing state of our world. Through my own immersion in community, the poetics of a movement practice goes from being speculative to being real and a part of my daily life. Most recently, that has been my relationship to house dancing. Over the past 3 years, I’ve learned the dance with several New York City club dance legends like Sekou Heru and Cebo Carr, and in turn discovered a lineage from their respective generations to my own in Jersey club culture. Now more than ever, the values of: immediacy, iteration, and spontaneity spill out of the dance and permeate my work.

I am most comfortable working with materials that are direct, malleable, and painterly. I want the things I make to feel like and embody an underlying poetics of living. I use materials that breathe, fold, curl, and flow away from the wall or other environment, accentuating the natural and built environments in which they are placed. By using painting and collage tactics, I use my materials to blur the line between 2d and 3d form. This comes from a fascination with the intersection between design, fashion, and literature, creative forms that are more accessible in my daily life. I want the objects I make to feel like keepsakes that you want to carry with you on your body, even if it's a large-scale watercolor.

I make works on paper, zines, steel sculpture, and audio work because they all lend themselves to painterly and collage impulses and become collaborators in the making process.

I want my work to remind me and the people around me to stay open to building a life with others. I take seriously the fun, the grief, and catharsis that people without access to capital find through collective action. And I am fascinated by the portals and energy fields that these practices produce through intense training.

Featured Image: Khari Johnson-Ricks, For Fun, 2021. Watercolor Shellac ink, Color Mylar, and Gouache on Cut Paper, 80x57 inches.