Choose Your Punctuation
Choose Your Punctuation, 2017
Pure LOVE, Paper Mache’, Faux Flowers, Wood, Acrylic Paint, African Fabric, Sequins, Beans, Coins, Rhinestones, Lace, Photos, 100% Organic Irritation, Glue
The words are letters with sides that are covered with fabric and augmentations in the style of the sacred arts. The flowers filling the letters are the type typically seen in African Diasporic funerals. The flowers are also hyper decorative and pretend to soften the statement while in actuality sharpening it. Kind of like saying “go to hell… and have a nice day” while sporting a large smile.
On the bottom right of the letters, is an old fashioned fire bucket that holds a wooden question mark, exclamation mark and period that are painted slate gray, a color of neutrality.
The altar under the letters is erected as a memorial to and celebration of sistahs who live and have lived the illustrated phrase.
The primary image on the top tier of the Altar is that of Sandra Bland. Her framed image is flanked by one yellow and one red candle.
The Artificial Price
We recognize that many of our most important messages come from our mothers. The Black Woman Is God is an exhibition that celebrates the African woman and her declaration of her divinity as her true self. We, Gods, know who we are and in living that truth are forced to compete against and address imagery and ideals that work to deny our divinity. One of the hardest experiences is having to address these forces with our youth and seeing our babies (no matter the age) misrepresented and sometimes absorbing those misrepresentations as their truth. Many of us will even unwittingly promote the cultivation of unhealthy self-images by investing our hard-earned dollars in them and handing them to our children to consume without direct mental, spiritual and intellectual supervision. In spite of that multi-layered problematic… we endure. In spite of all that, there is a still small voice inside of us that will not allow us to forget our divinity. In spite of it all.
We see our divinity, but so does everyone else which made us a target in the first place. But still, we rise. We are just that divine. Buying into the ideas fed to us is the artificial price of successful navigation of life in this society. Much like this toy, it is mass produced, mass-distributed and familiar. We reject all that and shine but we acknowledge the reality and its harm potentiality if only for identification and training purposes.
My piece is called The Artificial Price and is a commentary on the messages that our children get from a very early age about who they are and how they’re relationship with the judicial system will play out. These messages are delivered to our children in creative ways and are as painful to deliver as they are to receive and even to watch be received. The piece is an altered version of the toy that hung on my crib as a baby and is a familiar pop culture item. It’s imagery, which typically excluded people of color now includes them but only in unhealthy and hurtful ways.
The size of the piece is approximately 3 ft x 4 ft with the mounting platform. It is typically fastened to a piece of an old crib then mounted on the wall.
Skinned Coon Cap
Skinned Coon cap is a commentary on, interrogation of and expression of disgust prompted by those who vote and act against their own interests. It is a representation of the political tendency to do so but still recognizes that the behavior takes many forms. The live-action, life representation of the ideas encapsulated in this piece can be seen when people of marginalized communities vote and act to support white supremacists and patriarchal ignoramuses. Those who, in exchange for access to white adjacency, accept money to serve as public mouthpieces and operatives for industries, organizations and political parties that have made it their business to harm and even kill their people. It speaks to the bondage that we choose because someone has dressed it up and made it sparkle so that it feels highbrow and more palatable to us. This piece explores the sad reality of internalized racism and self-hatred. It also serves to facilitate an expansion of our understanding of the role that psychological imbalance, low self-esteem and the absence of basic instincts for self-preservation play in the psyche of people who revere fascism and patriarchy even though those systems work to oppress them as members of the human body politic.
Mentholated Death Coupon
Mentholated Death Coupon
Tracy Brown - Worldly Sistah
2021
Approximately 47,000 African American people die every year from nicotine-induced illness. Cigarettes, e-cigarettes and cigarillos, when used as directed, will more than likely kill the consumer. Most are unaware of the role that increased tobacco consumption played in the emergence of the deplorable system of chattel slavery out of which was born the sadly ever-present scourge of white supremacy. Menthol nicotine addiction products were invented in the 1920s and originally marketed to upscale White people. It was later used and continues to be used to target marginalized communities including and especially the Black community.
Death coupon is an implication of the lying liars who lie aka the killing killers who kill while representing tobacco companies which, fun fact, were adjudicated (aka found to be) racketeers by US congress. The Black vernacular version of the word is used in this piece empowering the targeted community to pass an official sentence on the shamefully guilty perpetrators using their own dialect. The piece also points the long, waggly finger of guilt at the US Government which is supposed to protect, provide and care for its citizens but has failed woefully to protect Black people from menthol nicotine products.
The design is a parody of the USDA food stamp which was in circulation the year of my birth. The food stamp features an image of several people who profited from the institution of slavery and in some cases tobacco as a commodity. It also features a symbol of hell in place of the symbol of liberty and freedom as a commentary on the effect of the nicotine addiction industry on the individual and collective lives of Black people.