Arts + Justice: 2024 Grant Recipients

My practice began in Richmond, Virginia where I was born and raised. It is now largely based in California, as I am currently a student at Stanford studying art practice. My medium of choice is oil paint, and often expands into other areas such as embroidery and textiles. My work centers Black and brown people, and focuses on topics having to do with mental and emotional wellbeing. Through the lived experiences of my peers, myself, and the works of various scholars I am able to create work that both serves as a visual means of expression, but also a space of reflecting on larger social structures and institutions.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” -Audre Lorde

This quote, along with the works of many other Black feminist scholars, poets, and overall creators, were the catalysts behind my project. They inspired me to think critically about what it is that we define as rest and its relations to various larger structures and institutions. Through my pieces, I explore the concept of rest within the confines of Stanford University. My goal for this project was to explore and understand the experiences of students within various marginalized identities(i.e. queer, black, neurodivergent, etc.) and how they engage with rest. I worked toward this goal through a series of interviews with folks I am often in community with (including Noach Macias, Kelli flowers, Sherlock Langevine, and many more who I may not have directly featured within my work, but that had a great deal to do with its creation).

Indeed as many students are aware, while regarded as one of the world's most prestigious institutions of higher education, Stanford University is often the perpetuator of a great deal of violence. That is both in a global context, as well as within the university itself. Through both my own experiences and a series of structured interviews/informal conversations it was made abundantly clear that Stanford is not the utopian site of rest it perpetuates itself to be. It often acts as the exact opposite and promotes students exerting themselves in ways that jeopardize their mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. One could argue (or rather I am arguing) that this is a tactic of maintaining students' ignorance towards the injustices that Stanford commits and or is actively complicit with. I have created these pieces to foster a space of deep thinking around our own practices of rest in addition to the larger communities we play a part.

Are you/your communities allowed to rest? If so...how? What does rest look like within these spaces? If not...in what ways are practices being hindered? What are the larger phenomena creating these hindrances? How do we collectively work together to dismantle such systems?

There are so many more questions we should be asking ourselves, especially within a space such as Stanford. I ask that you sit with my work and ponder such matters. In addition, I ask that we continue to care for our communities so we may all develop a sense of rest, and that we continue to work toward the freedom of all oppressed people.