No Space Know Space

“The black male figure is my sight of refusal and, at the same time, my physical and metaphysical in and between refuge of safety for the black male heart, mind, spirit, and psyche. It is my way back to what was never lost."

I investigate ways and methodologies to excavate and reinterpret the contemporary black male through the physical and metaphysical presence of the figure. As the occupant of a black male body, my fear has not been losing touch with our interiority while continuing to have our carnality intact, but how to visually depict demonstrations of us being in contact with this body in a liberatory way that does not confine us to racist or fetishized positions of consumption. This quest, I will admit, is not an easy task, given how racism disrupts and alters this understanding, how it is subtle and not so subtly inform and refigure notions of identification, desire, and fantasy that encircle this body. These notions continually reenergize the dominant backdrop of othering in the discourse of how black male images are made and talked about in contemporary culture. My research and investigations are highly influenced by the romantical positing of Object-Oriented Feminism as an entryway in, through, and past the black male figure, using form and function with sculptural intentions.