The layering
On top of
Below
Side by side
of my lived experience and the stories of deeply rooted Black and brown, queer, trans, gender non-conforming people in Richmond, VA
Living together and on top of each other
of my lived experience and the stories of deeply rooted Black and brown, queer, trans, gender non-conforming people in Oakland, CA
This is how I learn of my place and our relationship to it
This is how we make community, by speaking the same tongues
across states and counties and city lines and blocks and countries
Our language is told through care acts and slow looking, through asking why is it so hard to find any Black queer history in this city?
Living together and on top of each other
multi layered collages, paintings, prints, posters
on plastic/glass, a screen print transparency, a view from the inside that is different from the outside, windows
Sometimes the words are easy to read, other times they are illegible, the alphabet as we know it gets turned into patterns and imagery and doesn’t read in one way. Sometimes the words are hard to read, you have to move on, other times they ask you to pause and read again.
on Ro’s porch, in the streets of downtown Richmond, surrounded by queers bathing on river rocks, having nourishing check-ins, walking on the paths and trails of our forced migration, eating fresh papayas with lime, getting browner in hot southern sun, turning storefronts into the community centers of our dreams, learning from our elders, making kin in new spaces
helping me come to terms with the fact that our (and by our I mean B.I.Q.T.P.O.C.) stories will always be in relation to the lived experiences and places we orbit. I cannot understand that interweaving without interweaving my stories with stories of the people around me who speak my lived reality. It’s a new place and the same place.
These experiences are felt by many, all over this state, country, globe and this work amplifies these stories.
This amplification brings me closer to this landscape while also holding my deep roots in cities far far away. This amplification makes me, us, we feel seen, safe, resilient, protected. They become one here. They become one. Amplification becomes my viewfinder.
Roll Up Project, Oakland, CA 2022