I am an American Black artist,

meaning I am telling MY story the way only I can tell it.
Understand that Black people in America are not a monolith.
We all have extremely different life experiences that intersect vibrantly through music and culture but differ greatly in terms of spirituality, religion, location, education, economics, access, and heritage.

On creating art:
From the perspective of American Blackness, I make things my fellow American Black people can understand and allow themselves to resonate with while respecting that it may be a completely different experience from one they have had. Take me for example —

I have recently returned to music and painting after hiatus since 2017 with a more accepting view of myself and more interesting questions about the world around me. I still struggle with many parts of my swiss-cheese mixed heritage and identity. My Now does not look like what I have been through to get here. I am living evidence of a successful colonization. But I also overcame much of the deeply ingrained, flawed programming that would have knocked me off course from successfully pursue art and performance for a living, which means letting colonialism and capitalism really beat my ass and win.

On the other hand, from outside cultures, we Black people are all lumped together.

Meaning that Black artists are usually also lumped together in the art world. Regardless of our nationalities or ethnicities, our individual stories are still being violently watered down or fetishized as we are expected to churn out work— and often times, many artists are forced to completely switch styles — in order to satisfy other peoples’ out-of-touch fantasies about what it means to “collect” a painted Black body. It’s fucked up because the competitive assimilation obscures provenance, leading to poor sales in secondary markets. Plus, looking at the demographics of stewardship over these delicately crafted bodies for sale.. it’s just weird.

We are also usually expected to pimp out our trauma for attention, success, and respect in creative industries — we do not get the same open-minded reception from our non-black Western cohorts to be witnessed publicly exploring self-love, surrealism, abstraction, themes of introspection and peace, or anything of the sort. We are always, always expected to create something as it relates to oppression because our deeply colonized world only wants to consider that we are just commodified vessels of pain. The modern art world is currently demanding that we paint Black bodies for collectors, regardless of the actual pain and deep meaning behind the works that conveniently get left out of the acquisition. My work will never belong in that box. I am creating with a radical intent to push the needle of creativity and storytelling forward, asking new questions that involve EVERYONE’S participation while honoring the space my Blackness needs to heal and play and just.. be happy.

Why “American Black?”
I identify as American first. My art reflects how I see the world through the eyes of an American-born “Black” person. My life reflects the dark underbelly of the American experience — yet anywhere else in the world I visit I walk, talk, act, and think American. If I were to follow through with intentions to relocate for life anywhere else in the world and continue my art career, then my very presence, coupled with a desire to do what I want because I can, is the basis of gentrification (very similar to colonialism, but with softer violence). In this way, I am so very American.
American Black _____ means two complex experiences overlapping as one, and always speaking two languages at the same time. I am thriving in a world my predecessors were forced to co-create, and always from a disenfranchised position. (I get tired of explaining that part to people.) I have inherited America’s beauty and ugliness, it is all mine to grow flowers on.

On “Blackness”:
I am “Black” because America calls me that. Frankly, I feel that the racial checkboxes are outdated, so they don’t allow us to acknowledge our mixed heritages. Blackness, to me, is a deeply layered and vulnerable experience, and that example is part of it.

Why not just “American”?
Tooooooo radical for some folks. Personally, I embrace the Black part. I am pouring love into the Black.

Why not “African-American?”
I was not born in Africa, why am I hyphenating it?

“America” is an experience .

I am American by birth, and also by colloquial definition of what it means to become American: to live, work, and die for America. To have access to lifestyles all paid for in blood by generations of enslaved and conquered humans and underpaid groups of people making a living around the world right now. (“Thank you for calling [insert company], I am [insert introduction by a person from any other country besides America]”.) To participate in the most confusing, offensive, creative, intelligent, awe-inspiring, and stupid systems that reflect a design of chaos we are both proud and embarrassed about, depending on the day.