My artistic practice meditates on Afrofuturism, memory, sacred geometry, worldbuilding, and love within the Afro-Caribbean and Asian Diaspora. In my current body of work, I continue to examine my alter ego, The Tree. A character I utilize as a point of departure in my storytelling as I explore my identity as a Black Asian American woman with ancestral ties to Jamaica and the Philippines. My point of entry into artmaking was through the practice of sewing, a skill often taught within my family for functional purposes. I focus on the repetitive laborious nature of sewing and other craft based mediums as a way to center my storytelling and worldbuilding. In my artmaking I often work with used textile objects like bedsheets, towels, t-shirts, jeans, and other natural fiber constructed items that I keep after they are no longer wearable, forgotten, or left behind, seeing my manipulation and deconstruction of these objects as working with memory. It’s through this deconstruction process that I unravel the memories these objects hold, transforming them via papermaking, sculpture, and sewing. In using these materials I tell stories of the past, present, and future. Having repeatedly referenced the circle motif, I have activated this shape as a portal within my practice, at which they have now become a means of transportation, transformation, and storytelling. In this present chapter of The Tree’s story I am looking to understand my identity within and outside the context of the United States, using the American South and African American culture, as my time living in the South has become a catalyst in unearthing my ancestral lineages to Asia and the Caribbean.

For further insight into my current project click here.