Artist’s Statement
My art practice encompasses oil painting, drawing, ceramics, and movement towards exploring the visual representations of Black African womanhood.
I create large-scale paintings of Black African women that are based on photographs from personal archives of my family, close acquaintances and myself, and historical sources. These images confront the viewer, choosing to display their sometimes nude bodies. Uplifted and celebrated, they are unapologetic and confident. This close examination of women allowed me to think about how the underlying paint impacts and affects the subject’s skin tone. The paints add a luminous quality to the figure's skin celebrating their individuality. I present these works as a means to challenge derogatory colonial hegemonic perspectives of Black womanhood. I reference compositions from historic photographs of Black African women to create more celebratory images.
The subjects of my paintings gaze back upon the viewer, encouraging audiences to consider their role in the visual consumption and appropriation of black women’s bodies. The Western colonial depiction of Black women can be considered dehumanising, however, the active gaze of my subjects, and the women they represent, gifts them agency over their bodies and self-image.