FROM A

BLACK

WOMB.

A visual clap back to the post-trauma infographic, FaB Womb envisions an ongoing discursive space that gives form to how Black women conceive of their gynecological and reproductive experiences.

We need to talk about Black women’s reproductive labor.

Loudly. In intimate whispers. Visually. Among all kinds of people and across various contextual intersections. In exploring antecedents of the current crises in Black maternal fetal health equity and their present day implications, we must challenge and expand upon existing modes of inquiry and explanation. This work proposes new methods of seeing, processing and responding to trauma and survival related to birthing bodies.

from PAIN.

This project is a response to pain–one more kind of damn pain that nobody ever wanted to add to the pile of pain. It is gut punch–raw, there like a familiar stalking spirit. It is made from the flesh of the unknown and bound together by a tight, sizzling ashy-edged rage.

For me the pain feels like labor, but it is the opposite because it is unnatural–frustratingly unproductive. I am talking about the pain of looking at attempts to chart pathology by columns and numbers, the pain of caregivers who struggle for empowerment, the hurt of hearing bad experiences in medical settings, the fear that surrounds preeclampsia, low birthweight babies, fibroids, polycystic ovary disease, cancer and all their relations, the rage that gathers around disproportionate adversity for Black folks.

Some of why I’m working is to contrast this pain with realness, that is whole, having pleasure within it. So you may ask where I get it from.

What is this project?

a discursive enterprise
an experiment unbound by time
a model from and for our culture
an emerging cultural preservation initiative
an invitation to share Black stories
a rebuke of shame
a tribute to Black resilience
a counterpoint to negative infographics
an assist to caregivers made with critical love

an assertion that Black women are real

we think
we move
we feel
we laugh so hard
we heal
we are so fucking resilient
we are fragile like a bomb
we survive incredible damage
we drag each other up
we are progeny and yet, not defined by creating more progeny

To Paint FROM
Something

Inappropriate Reproduction, (unrolled and rolled) mixed-media on yupo with vellum chine collé, plate size 15.5 x 18.5 x 2”

These look like images. They function differently than pictures. We think of making (taking?) a picture of a thing. The thing gets depicted. These want to move more like documents of a convening (a data set?). They are paintings from something–created by a complex variety of acts. There is contact, imprint, transfer, pressure, temperature, condensation, removal. All combine to formally create a visual archive of lived experience. They are mixed-media works on Yupo paper–image size 15 1/2 x16 1/2”. Each originates from a gesture, which mirrors the movement of an interviewee. They progress based on intuitive responses to both individual and collective source material from video interviews.