the seeds for what became let’s dance our way back home began to germinate after a visit to see Cy Twombly’s Fifty Days at Iliam series of paintings in November 2022. they are among my top favorites of his and i’ve seen them at the Philadelphia Museum of Art multiple times. however, during this visit, i unexpectedly found a new literature-based thread to pull at and examine in my practice. i sat with it all for a while, allowing dreams, thoughts, questions, and research rabbit holes to lay out the path forward and a way just to begin. i remember waking up at 4:37 a.m. one morning with the words “go do the work” ringing in my ears. and so i have. slowly at first, just gathering, compiling, reading, listening to clips, watching interviews, tapping out notes on my phone, playing in my sketchbook, and moving my body to process, synthesize, and metabolize it all. as i did, i found myself cracking open in ways i didn’t anticipate, becoming awash in emotions flowing from the cavernous openings each fissure produced. i’ve spent my time in the studio, in the shower, in my gardens, out on walks, & in front of my altars cradling grief as it’s emerged from every crevice and recess in my heart, channeling previously suppressed rage as it has boiled up from my belly, both laughing and crying in the same breath, releasing screams from my soul that have no intelligible sound, becoming reacquainted with my Lilith power in the void of what’s felt like the darkest moon, dancing, & thrashing to release somatically what i haven’t had any other intelligible language for during these last 4.5 years. it is only within the last two that i’ve committed to the challenge of allowing it all to spill out a bit wildly and find form through various materials (brush, cloths & rags, skeins & piles of knotted yarn, a swing, draped curtains, stretched & unstretched linen) and somatic expression through my own body’s movements.
these paintings are born from the personal rage, grief, joy, deconstruction, and internal transformations i’ve held possibly too close to the chest in an attempt to keep from being rendered into a construction of self i no longer recognize. they are the visual evidence of what has survived and what has not, of all that i’ve been wading through psychosomatically and, at times, drowning in since 2020. each piece became a repository for what i’ve been unable to find a suitable container for elsewhere. in each, i’ve constructed a visual language and intersecting narratives to articulate my experiences with ongoing isolation, the erosion of public health, and the abandonment of community care alongside my family during the pandemic.
they are also the third series of paintings & mixed media pieces in a larger body of work that began with my solo “self-evident truths” earlier this year at Various Small Fires and continued with “Wholeness is Worth the Weight” at The Armory Show with Galerie Marguo last month. with each series, my focus has been to challenge our presuppositions around emotionality, what we are conditioned to metabolize as truth, and what we accept about ourselves/each other/the systems we live within by sharing insights into my processes of deconstruction & re-education. that visit to see Fifty Days at Iliam in 2022 left me thinking about the kinds of texts we deem classical within and beyond art history as well as the kinds of literature we elevate as foundational, necessary for all to read to gain a broader education about the world we live within and the histories we are the products of. i thought about how Twombly felt so connected to Alexander Pope’s translation of a historical text, he was moved to respond to it visually, which lead to me considering what texts have moved me in a similar manner. on a personal level, i’ve never connected to Homer’s The Iliad, but Hard Times Require Furious Dancing by Alice Walker became my safe harbor these last 12 months. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison, various writings by Toni Cade Bambara, the works of Octavia Butler and other Black writers and artists have sustained me intellectually and emotionally during this age of rising fascism, survival, and collective reckoning. it is their literature that has become foundational to the seismic shifts that have transformed my interiority as i enter my mid-life. their words have deepened my understanding of our shared history, cultural & social issues, and human behavior while forcing me to confront and refine my values with incisive, surgical precision. in an attempt to make sense of my undoing and the events of the last four years that have disrupted nearly every aspect of our society and system that’s been normalized for at least the last half a century, i turned to these writers and thinkers for a much deeper analysis of topics i either haven’t had any awareness or education around or have only had a surface level grasp of.
i hope that responding to their work through my own helps to center and designate their writings as classical literature worthy of the same esteem and regard held for Ancient Greek & other historical texts. i’m no scholar or academic, but this is my small and perhaps clumsy attempt to assist in expanding the canon of abstraction & abstract expressionism, at least in terms of contextualization, influence, and historical reference.
lastly, these works are prayers, and if the work does nothing else, i pray it moves people to feel, confront, and sit with their feelings and that doing so leads to some level of healing, restoration, and transformation within their own lives, wherever they need or desire it most.
view the installation here.
for those of you interested in a deep dive behind the scenes:
here are the literature/music/art history references (2022-present) a non-exhaustive list of sources that have inspired or informed my work in some capacity over the last two years, including my latest exhibition, let’s dance our way back home.
literature
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing*, Alice Walker (*my main literature reference for my latest exhibition)
The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara
Shake Loose My Skin, Sonia Sanchez
Black Liturgies, Cole Arthur Riley
A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde
Selected Works of Audre Lorde (edited by Roxane Gay)
The Source of Self-Regard, Toni Morrison
all about love, bell hooks
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions, Toni Cade Bambara
In Search of Our Mothers Gardens, Alice Walker
Hunger, Roxane Gay
Laughing to Keep From Crying, Langston Hughes
Bone, Yrsa Daley Ward
How We Fight For Our Lives, Saeed Jones
Wildflower, Aurora James
Body Work, Melissa Febos
Black Women Writers at Work, edited by Claudia Tate
Selected Poems, Sonia Sanchez
Sing a Black Girl’s Song, The Unpublished Works of Ntozake Shange, edited by Imani Perry
Caste, Isabel Wilkerson
Selected Poems, June Jordan
i also read a lot of research papers, memoir, poetry, and other literature on:
• neurodivergence (autism, ADHD)
• sensory processing
• stimming & nervous system regulation
• synaptic pruning & brain development in neurodivergent individuals
• emotionality & emotional expression
• epigenetics & epigenetic expression
• trauma
• what shapes and drives identity & behavior
• perimenopause & menopause
• somatic movement
• dance movement
music/sounds/playlist
"Nice to Know You”/Incubus (song)
"I’m Not Okay (I Promise)”/My Chemical Romance (song)
"Play in the Sunshine”/Prince (song)
"Screwed”/Janelle Monae (song)
"New World Coming”/Nina Simone (song)
Around The World in a Day/Prince (album)
Alice Coltrane (selected songs)
Betty Davis (selected songs)
Fiona Apple (tidal + extraordinary machine + fetch the bolt cutters albums)
High Priestess/Santigold (album)
”Dance Apocalyptic”/Janelle Monae (song)
"River Deep, Mountain High”/Tina Turner (song)
"Dance On”/Prince (song)
"Elephants & Flowers”/Prince (song)
"Wait a Minute”/Willow (song)
Empathogen/Willow (album)
”Lipstick”/Willow (song)
"Lightning Crashes”/LIVE (song)
"Heaven in Pennies”/Esperanza Spalding (song)
"Swimming Toward The Black Dot”/Esperanza Spalding (song)
"Double Jointed Canyon”/Esperanza Spalding (song)
"Good Lava”/Esperanza Spalding (song)
"Rest in Pleasure”/Esperanza Spalding (song)
"Cranes in the Sky”/Solange Knowles (song)
"Gimme All Your Love”/Alabama Shakes (song)
"Dunes”/Alabama Shakes (song)
"Gold"/Prince (song)
"We March"/Prince (song)
"Chaos & Disorder”/Prince (song)
"Banshee”/Santigold (song)
"Run the Road”/Santigold (song)
"Forward”/Beyonce & James Blake
This is Why/Paramore (album)
"Hard Times”/Paramore (song)
"Down to Ride”/Gary Clark Jr. (song)
"Free”/Florence + The Machine (song)
"Shake it Out”/Florence + The Machine (song)
"Live 4 Love”/Prince (song)
"Forgiven”/Alanis Morrisette (song)
"Fool For You”/Alice Smith (song)
"Positivity”/Prince (song)
"FUNKNROLL”/Prince (song)
"Funk The Fear”/Esperanza Spalding (song)
"Master Blaster (Jammin’)”/Stevie Wonder (song)
Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing/Stevie Wonder
"Higher Ground”/Stevie Wonder (song)
"We Can Work It Out”/Stevie Wonder (song)
"Superstition”/Stevie Wonder (song)
"Alright”/Kendrick Lamar (song)
"DNA”/Kendrick Lamar (song)
Americans/Janelle Monae (songs)
This Land/Gary Clark Jr. (songs)
"Helicopters (Beware)”/Jidenna (song)
"Warning”/Incubus (song)
artists/works/performances
Mary Lovelace O’Neal (painting)
Fifty Days at Illiam, Cy Twombly (painting, literature)
Glen Ligon (neon, writing/text)