"I am an Afro-Dominican American artist, writer and community organizer from the South Bronx, NY. In 2017 I graduated from the USC Roski School of Art & Design in Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. In 2024 I graduated with an MFA in Painting from the UCL Slade School of Fine Arts in London. I have shown my work internationally and have also received various artist residencies, grants and awards for my practice, most recently receiving the Adrian Carruthers Studio Prize with ACME for my Slade MFA Degree Show presentation. I am currently an artist in residence at ACME for their early careers program in London.
My visual arts practice is deeply rooted in documenting a femme afro-diasporic intersectional experience. I focus on depicting growth and transformation through an understanding of community, ancestry, purpose and the connection between the child self and the adult self. I am interested in investigating the way that folks in the African Diaspora are in pursuit of joy as well as their personal and communal purpose through using a variety of materials. I use painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance as tools for the pursuit of joy. Expressing the pursuit of joy in my practice is important to me because I feel it is part of my life’s purpose. I owe that to myself, my ancestry and to the community who is deeply connected to my evolution and self-actualization in complex ways.
My work is multi-layered and uses bright hues in order to allow for the re-envisioning of reality and expansion of what is communicated in the ways we deal with ourselves, others, the earth and the universe. Through my work I visualize real and imaginative spaces. By mixing in remnants of the figure within abstracted environments, I also convey a space in which the body and the spirit can communicate, find alignment and reconnect. Through semi-representational and abstract images, I portray the context, the meaning and emotional capacity for the symbols and figurative elements in my work. Highlighting adult concepts with a childlike aesthetic also allows me to access joy while reimagining and challenging representations of trauma and emotional space in my work.
In my digital media and social practice, I serve as a creative collaborator for Honey and Smoke, a global artist community and platform focused on creating space for artists to meditate on the important themes of our time. H&S explores these themes through spearheading creative inquiry, education, interactive experiences and digital content.
A while ago I heard a Yoruba story of a woman attempting to climb a palm tree. However, she was being stopped by animals and the environment surrounding the tree. She needed to find a way to get them on her side. Eventually, she was able to enact support from these elements and thus bring forth a clear uninterrupted and supported passageway towards the palm tree. This story has been on my mind since then as the climbing of the palm tree symbolized her destiny and speaks to a necessary grounding and working with one’s own spirit to receive support from the environment, people, systems or structures that may prevent one from self actualizing and fulfilling one’s purpose.
For this Moosey exhibition I focused on a screenprinted drawing of a Black woman who has just climbed a palm tree and is relishing in being at the top of it, a physically and emotionally heightened state. This image can be seen in two different orientations that are upside down from one another: One placing the figure at the forefront of the composition, looking down at the palm tree from above or another from the perspective of the ground that sees the figure at the top of the tree. The image is repeated throughout the exhibition but painted in different colors and layers of paint. It is installed amongst a painted forest of palm trees and graphite drawings that serve as shadows of streams of consciousness.
The symbol of the palm tree not only references the Yoruba story that brought about this work, but also acts as a symbol that connects me and many others to a Caribbean and afro-diasporic heritage as well as my time living in the Dominican Republic as a child. The palm tree as a symbol, character and item of the horizon is omnipresent in 18th and 19th century paintings depicting Caribbean and Latin American enslaved people and colonies. I am particularly drawn to Dirk Valkenburg’s Ritual Slave Party on a Sugar Plantation in Suriname, 1706, Samuel Raven’s Celebrating the Emancipation of Slaves in British Dominions, 1834 and Julien Vallou de Villeneuve’s Little Master that I Love, 1840. Although these paintings all situate the palm tree as a passive element of the landscape or portrait, I offer a different read. Its presence acts as a participant/viewer of the picture plane, an observer or a symbol of healing and liberation. With regards to the Yoruba story of the woman and the palm tree it reminds me that destiny is always present and ready to be climbed.
Presenting the works in La Subida Del Destino (Destiny’s Climb) in this way serve as an ode to the personal and communal journeys that we take in order to feel fulfilled, liberated and ultimately happy. Different layers of paint and colors give the work weight, memory and signal a layered experience. Situating these works amongst a forest of palm trees highlights the potential energy of destinies to come, ready to be climbed or destinies not fulfilled because of external forces and systems. This work highlights a journey towards self actualization and joy. Making work like this is important to me, to my ancestry and to the community who is deeply connected to my liberation and evolution as well as that of marginalized groups."
Opens Thursday 27th February 2025 6-8pm