In Land We Rest (2024)

Ceramics,Foliage,CRT TV, Synthetic Hair

1 x 1 feet

In Land We Rest situates Black corporeality and memory within both natural and technological landscapes, merging organic foliage with synthetic hair, ceramics, and a CRT TV to explore intergenerational trauma and resilience. The work reflects the complex negotiation between Black subjectivity and systemic surveillance, highlighting the persistent gaze that seeks to regulate Black life. The CRT television acts as a conduit, broadcasting historical and contemporary narratives of displacement, erasure, and survival, while ceramic and foliage elements ground the piece in tactile materiality, recalling ancestral connections to land and the cycles of growth and decay. Hair, as a recurring motif, asserts cultural identity, echoing the reclamation of Black aesthetics from commodification and oppression. By integrating organic and technological forms, In Land We Rest prompts the viewer to consider how history, memory, and identity coexist across generations. The work is both a meditation and a warning: a call to honor the body, heritage, and the spaces in which Black life persists, resists, and flourishes despite enduring structural violence.