Mixed textiles, wood

15.5in x 174 in.

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“a tiny little thing”, a project of The Light Fantastical, exhibited at the Turchin Center for Visual Arts in Boone, NC from June 7 through December 7, 2019. The exhibit, “With or Without”, curated by Cara Hagan engaged a long-distance collaborative practice and philosophy called, “Artistic Surrogacy", which seeks to create issues of institutional bias, financial constraints related to art making and distribution, issues of geographical and/or circumstantial isolation, environmental implications of artist travel, commonly-held notions of what constitutes “art,” and what a “successful” art career looks and feels like.

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"A fire resulted in the loss of my family home and archives last year, and cleared the path for this work. The initial aim was to make a book - a tiny little thing - collaged with documents, recipes, drawings, quotes, bits and pieces, pockets of mythologies...A gift to my children - Shiloh and Nyah Love. In its place, is a 14’ length of cloth that survived the fire. It is composed of three pieces: a piece from my mother, a piece from my sister, and a wrap I wore during the home birth of my first child. Sewn hastily together just before the birth of my second child, the cloth is a traditional African tie used in pregnancy and during birth. Its great length and materiality is a meditation on motherhood and legacy; on surrogacy as an artistic practice."