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In my artistic practice, I look for points of convergence amid the isolating expanse of empty homogeneous time and the confines of modern life and imaginations. My narratives, archival work, and experiments are all through the gaze of Black temporality. There is no single definition of Black temporality, but to me, it is the understanding that the past is not past and that the present is composed of now, then, and will be. My work explores the contradictions of modern time consciousness as the negotiation between internal experiences of time and institutionally-enforced temporality, a byproduct of European colonialism, now naturalized through global capitalism. Leaning into this nontraditional way of considering time has challenged me to eschew conventional narrative paths. The act of reading, mostly considered a linear process, becomes a dynamic and nonlinear exploration. Stories can be sped, slowed, or suspended in time by playing with not only the structure of the prose or the introduction of ghosts in the walls, but also through interventions in form. I’m searching for new ways for a reader to share a minute with one character who grew up in an old house with creaky floors that required a slow and careful step vs. another who lived their whole life in an apartment facing a busy highway. Maybe for someone who experiences time as a creaky floor, every few words are punctuated with the sound of slow stretching.

writer, librettist & multi-media artist