Artist Statement

My practice is rooted in an inherited tradition of making. I come from a family of seamstresses, woodworkers, and carpenters. Material, to me, isn't decoration — it's inheritance. It's a way of thinking passed down before I had language for it. This understanding shapes my Afrofuturist mask work. Through mixed-media forms, I reimagine Black identity across time, layering African aesthetics, spiritual symbolism, and contemporary material culture. Some materials I used such as wood, resin, beads, shells, fibers, and found objects become narrative devices in this work. Each one carries memory, the way an artifact carries history.

Recent genealogical research traced my lineage to present-day Nigeria and the Benin/Togo region. This discovery reframed my practice. My masks don't replicate specific traditional forms. They're an intuitive, speculative response — shaped by inherited memory and diasporic resonance. Each mask becomes a technology: a vessel where ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and imagined futures converge. Through this work, I ask how cultural knowledge is inherited, transformed, and carried forward. I see Blackness not as fixed, but as expansive — a continuum still being written.