Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

My studio practice explores cycles of resilience, transformation, and liberation through an interdisciplinary approach bridging sculpture, cooking, sound, video, and social practice. Central to this inquiry is the table—not just as furniture, but as portal, altar, archive, and site of gathering. My MFA thesis instillation, “The Table and the Larder,” brought together domestic aesthetics, ancestral food preservation technologies, and radical activism to create a portal into Black cultural memory and a site for imagining liberated futures. I used charred wood, heirloom seeds, soil, and archival fragments to surface Black histories often buried or commodified. At Headlands, I’ll continue this work by building a large sculptural table that activates Black memory in Marin City through material interventions, sonic elements, and participatory programming. I’m particularly interested in how sound, food, and space can be layered to evoke ancestral knowledge and collective healing.

While At Headlands

During my time at Headlands, I’ll be continuing my body of work exploring Black resilience, memory, and communal care through food and materiality. I plan to build a large, sculptural wooden table—ebonized, charred, and punctured with intentional holes—referencing historical erasure and resistance. Drawing from the legacy of Black life in nearby Marin City, I’ll embed archival materials and found objects that speak to the layered experiences of that community. The table will serve both as sculpture and site: a place for gathering, conversation, cooking demonstrations, and activation. By merging personal narrative, diasporic foodways, and sculptural language, this work seeks to honor everyday Black ingenuity while asking how domestic objects can hold collective histories. The project continues my exploration of the table as both altar and archive, one that invites people to sit, share, and remember together.