Land And Me (2025)

Performance, Film, Photography

20  x 17 Inches

Land And Me is an intimate, site-specific exploration of the relationship between Black female identity, land, and water. Using organic materials transformed into paint and offerings, I enact a performance that draws on spiritual and cultural archetypes such as Mami Wata, the water spirit. This work is deeply personal, created 24 hours before a 51/50 intervention, exploring my confrontation with fear, mental health, and ancestral trauma. The performance and resulting photographic work reflect a layered engagement with Southern Black traditions, female rage, and the cultural politics of Black womanhood. Drawing inspiration from Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) and Beyonce’s Lemonade, the piece examines intergenerational memory, resilience, and the ritualized connection to land and ocean. Each gesture in the performance is both reclamation and dialogue, a negotiation between vulnerability and strength. The work interrogates societal pressures on Black women to remain composed, while simultaneously asserting the necessity of emotional expression, spiritual reflection, and ancestral remembrance. By intertwining performance, material experimentation, and photographic documentation, Land And Me situates personal experience within broader historical and cultural narratives, creating a layered reflection on Black female subjectivity, survival, and empowerment.