Installation
(Up)roots
Sculpture
Venus Fruit of Populous Tree
6x7 Black and White Film scan of Sculpture piece
This is an image of my sculpture piece, Venus Fruit of Populous Tree, made from a cardboard base, brown packaging tape, fish wire, and silver wire. In an exhibition, this is meant to be hung. Billie Holiday performed a song called "Strange Fruit." She sings:
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
In a time when black activism was tamed out of fear, and black people were confined to specific roles, Holiday used her reach to both black and white audiences to address the treatment of African Americans, specifically in the South. The populous tree is native to Tennessee, which is also the birthplace of the KKK. I reflect on my childhood in Nashville, where city planners intentionally refocus state history (i.e., The Parthenon).
In this deconstructed texturized body form, I respond to the history of violence and reach to ancient Egyptian depictions of the body (Venus Figurine).
HOW DO I HOLD YOU?
Laser-etched acrylic plates printed on paper and collaged onto a sculpted extraterrestrial form of vines and roots. These plates are reproductions of daguerreotypes, sourced from the digital Schomberg archives. These frames and portraits