“BURN-Life, Reality & Healing Black Women”

 

The BURN Project is an interdisciplinary art and literary endeavor. Burn serves as a metaphor to help rethink the many ways black women have been burned across the world (e.g. unemployment, appropriation, dismissal, isolation, gentrification, cooptation, physical and sexual abuse, exploitation, to name a few) and simultaneously amplify their unique agency to set things on “Fiya” (aka Fire) and heal.
 

I am conducting ethnographic research, creating new art, developing literary works (e.g. poetry, prose, narratives) and creating a multi-media installation. The BURN Project seeks to explore some of the sociopolitical, economic and cultural contexts in which black women have experienced “Burn”. Black women’s voice is at the heart of this project.

The BURN Project utilizes black feminist theories of intersectionality, standpoint, sass, womanism and self-care which ultimately point to agency. Some underlying questions for the work are as follows: In what ways has the dominant hegemonic culture fanned the flames of oppression thereby benefitting from the beauty, work, artistry, labor, creativity and power of black women? How have black women used their fiya to adapt, circumvent, develop, heal and thrive in spite of these circumstances?

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Much of the visual work uses some form of burn, flame and/or fire in its production. Charcoal, water, healing herbs, graphite, and ashes are some of the mediums incorporated in the abstract and conceptual pieces. Some of the work is digitally manipulated to consider the layers associated with burn.