Artist Statement:
She Blinded Them With Science continues my body of work using text and pattern to explore social constructs, binary thinking, and the nature of existence. My works on paper incorporate the processes of hand-lettering, drawing, origami and the zoetrope. Working with a minimal amount of materials is important to me to convey a silent strength with a sense of the ephemeral nature of each moment in reflection upon a prominent figure of my culture, Queen Nanny, leader of the Windward Jamaican Maroons, who was almost erased from history.
In my research of Queen Nanny, four words stood out for me: ohemmaa (means queen mother in Kromanti (the language of the Jamaican and Surinamese Maroons heavily influenced by Twi (the language of Ghana)), xaymaca (means land of wood and water in Arawakan (the language of the indigenous people of South America and the Caribbean)), abeng (means horn in Kromanti), and gumbay (means drum in Kromanti). Nanny was an obeah woman (a woman who practices traditional African religions) who is portrayed historically as having used her powerful science to protect her people.
My thoughts and emotions connected with the sounds made by the abeng and the gumbay, my continued study of Queen Nanny, and exploration of my mother’s homeland of Jamaica inform the composition of the work in this show. The video included in the exhibition (with music by Dashon Moore and edited by Ciara Elle Bryant) features sounds by the abeng and gumbay and distorted footage from Moore Town (formally Nanny Town) that I filmed during a trip to Jamaica at the end of May this year (2022).
She Blinded Them With Science is my sixth solo exhibition. I often utilize letterforms, paper, and sewing to recontextualize and conceptualize my Catholic upbringing, my background, and where I fit into how history has unfolded.
An opening reception was held Friday, Dec. 2, 2022. Click here to see the photo gallery.
