I am interested in the underneath of things, and the sublimation of the abject. Combining performance, sculpture, video and sound, I engage in a series of actions to develop a cultural practice, and eventually a world. These worlds support various characters, mythologies, and personal habits.  Recently I have been taking walks around my neighborhood, following impulses to hoard discarded electronics, street flyers, motors, mining them for points of discontent. I think about making them into fantasy versions of themselves.  A recent conceptual interest in anarchist philosophy of early 20th century Italy led me to the idea of “propaganda by deed,” and considering the NOW of the destructive action as a way of creating new forms or ways of being.  In the video Quartered, I research my racist ancestor, the gynecologist Dr. James Marion Sims. Sims was catapulted to fame for discoveries made through horrific experiments he conducted on enslaved African-American women. I’m black on my mother’s side, though I’m often mistaken for white. I have twice ventured to Sims’s hometown in rural South Carolina, most drawn towards local residents who call themselves “sensitives” or witches. While there this last summer, I performed actions as a spectral character in the landscape, building a series of explosive sculptures, or bombs.

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Featured Image: Geo Wyeth, Quartered (untitled still), 2014. Courtesy of the artist.