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What are You? Illustrating dehumanizing racial ideologies
Current exhibit (solo): Pearl City Clay House, Jamestown, NY
By visually manifesting the animals used to classify “mixed-race” humans I aim to challenge the dehumanizing terms of race science used to other people. The project, in addition to being an artistic and scholarly endeavor, is personal.
Coming of age in New York City people would regularly ask me “What are you?” The question jarred my psyche and though I knew people wondered about my racial category sometimes I would answer “human!” Other times, before knowing the historical baggage of the word, I would answer “mulatto” because by American classification I am “half black” and “half white.” Later, I learned that this was the Spanish word for mule – the barren offspring of a donkey and a horse, a beast of burden.
Using the symbology and etymology of the term “hybrid” as a foundation I will create 10 ceramic non-human animal forms that will bear the weight of quotes from my dissertation research coupled with historical images to demonstrate the dehumanizing elements of race science as it applied to people-of-color generally and people of mixed-race specifically. The juxtaposition of portions of the research will contextualize how using zoological terms to refer to BIPOC was (and continues to be) a strategy of colonizers, imperialists, and capitalists to dehumanize and exploit colonized peoples for gain.
This series will expand on an ongoing ceramic project Coloured Pots: Izinkamba kwamaKaladi (see below).
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Exhibitions
Coloured Pots: Izinkamba kwamaKaladi
Past solo: McCalla Gallery, Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana (April - September 2025)
Past: Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY as part of Art in Craft Media Exhibition (Friday November 10, 2023 - March 31,2024).
Past solo: KOA Gallery at University of Pittsburgh-Bradford, Bradford , PA (February 22 - March 22, 2024).
Past: African American Museum in Dallas, Tx as part of The 27th Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Competition and Exhibition (December 17 - March 17, 2023)
Past solo: Tri County Arts Council, Olean, NY (August 19-September 24, 2022)
Mission
This series invokes a style of pottery traditionally made and used by amaZulu people in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The photographs transposed on the ceramic vessels are from family archives and unpack the term Coloured as it was and is used across South African history and geography.
Vision
Coloured is a pre-Apartheid era designation for people that were not considered African or European, but fell somewhere in between. This designation included immigrants from South Asia and people whose parents came from two or more distinct ethnic and racial groups. During Apartheid (1948-1994) there were 7 distinct "Coloured" groups. Although South Africa entered a new "non-racial era" with the first fully democratic election of Nelson Mandela, the "Coloured" category persisted. In the post-Apartheid era of the "Rainbow Nation" Coloured people from across the nation lamented continued invisibility. This work unpacks the history of the category and highlights "so-called Coloureds."
The Words
This series draws from my dissertation on Coloured Identity formation in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Click here to read more! The words printed were chosen and paired with family photographs from my extended family's archives to show the real-life implication of racial ideology and laws that sought to separate people based on pseudo-science.