TAKE TWO: (see: “American Black Artist”)

American , Afro, Latina

I am a lighter-skinned copy of my Black and Cherokee mom, who gave birth to me after a lot of her side of the family had passed away. I have her eyes.
I share my other facial features with a whole Cuban family I’ve never met, my father and his side. I don’t have his tongue, for sure. The heavy Cuban accent is something I missed out on.
The only languages I speak fluently are English and AAVE.

I am a descendant of three groups of people whose identities have been heavily exploited and disenfranchised, diminished, and/or erased; Much of the racial mixing that happened between my ancestors was non-consensual.

I was born in Miami just before 7th and Lenox Avenue became a pretty place near where they do this little thing called Art Basel every winter.

I’m a product of all-out war on my people in a capitalist economy: disruption of the family, economic factors that contribute heavily to mental illness, poverty, drugs, lack of access to competitive resources, subpar healthcare, racism/classism/genderism, and when I think of more I’ll add it here.

I AM AN AMERICAN AFRO-LATINA ARTIST.

My work is robust with ancient information that even * I * don’t always fully grasp until much time later.

It took some time but I finally arrived. Of all things, the event that brought me here, to this place of calling myself Afro-Latina when I do not speak another colonized language well other than English, I do not know my Cuban father or anyone on his side, I do not live in Miami since my mom sent me away to live with people who didn’t love her or me.
I do know how to make maduros. I learned from Youtube, and my friends in Brooklyn taught me how to prepare bacalau, but not the Cuban way. I still don’t know how to make my Black beans taste Cuban either —

The event that finally brought me here was years in the making; of all things, it was painting.
And maybe also the time I visited Cuba for several weeks and saw my features in so many faces around me, responding to everyone’s eres Cubana? with “Si, pero no hablo español bien, mi mama y mi papa estaban peleando cuando yo nací y se separon..” To which everyone responded, “Yup. Typical Cuban man.”

My paintings care about none of this. I zone out as I make them, channeling figures and messages from another realm. Sometimes several realms at once. I feel a sense of responsibility to being a painter even though I am a long-time musician whos music sounds nothing like what someone may find in Cuba. Or anywhere in America. Because my music also comes from that same place.

My paintings look like old new things. Lo-fi renderings of extremely complex beings. I don’t know why they chose me as a dmn vessel, because I can’t paint people to save my life, I make representative marks. While I channel, the colors choose me. The paintings paint themselves and I’m just a vessel. They remind everyone who looks at them of Africa and South America. * looks at my skin * Yup. That tracks. It’s beyond me how I know NOTHING about NOTHING regarding anyone in my family beyond my mom, yet I seem to be tapping into something so old and important it takes me forever and a day just to make one piece.
BTW: Looking at the finished works with a few grams of mushrooms in the system is the best way to activate them, IMO.

Besides painting, I have been struggling for 37 years to feel my Afro-Latinaness. (Update I don’t struggle as much)
37 years of calling myself ANYTHING but Afro-Latina. The shame I carried from not being wanted by my birth parents or their families. More shame from being able to speak to 2 billion more people in the world because I didn’t have a (colonized) Spanish tongue, not knowing the right balance of flavors to make things taste Cuban, not having any idea of the wild politics and macro/micro-aggressions around being Black in the Latin American world.

Still, I am Afro-Latina. I say Afro as in literally Afro, not Afro-hyphen to mean Africa. I was not born in Africa and neither were my parents. But one of my parents was born in Cuba, and I have always felt it in my body and soul. I just couldn’t admit it because I was so insecure. The intuitive artwork I make, the way my hips move like I’m doing salsa no matter what music I’m dancing to (yes even at church, I know, blasphemous), those are the ancestral gifts my father passed to me with to make up for all the bullshit that comes from leaving me fatherless. Cuban family-less. That don’t mean shit.