In the wake of police brutality and senseless murder, I have begun to view my life as a liminal state. I feel as if I, being a person of color, is on the crossroads of freedom and restraint.
Recently, my mind has been plagued with a phrase: “I don’t want to be erased”. It has become an ode to that liminal state, where I am on the cusp of feeling expendable and feeling alive. My project focuses around the anxiety I feel because of my deep connection to my Black history and the emotions that arise from police brutality, as well as the reminder that I a a human being who loves and is loved.
Each photo connects to another, creating a dialogue behind the present and the past. I am a black woman with strong family ties and friends; however, being a black woman means I continue with this historical journey that begins with slavery, Jim Crow, and civil rights.
This dialogue never leaves me. It has become a part of my every day journey, where a chain, a dart board, cotton, and even a “white paper only” sign alludes to this history. These items are mundane in their spaces, but they are the threshold of my reality. They become heavy in their context and, from my own life perspective, read as symbols. They become my own elaborating conceptual symbols–constructed metaphors–and change the way in which I live in this world. At the end of all of this history, I am reminded that based on the pigmentation of my skin–I could be taken away from my family and this journey. Which is why I cry to everyone in this piece: I don’t want to be erased.
