Photo prints, cellophane sleeves, cellophane tape
75.5 x 26 in (191.8 x 66 cm)
Final wish, 2025
Photo prints, cellophane sleeves, cellophane tape
67.5 x 26.5 in (171.5 x 67.3 cm)
Untitled (Coffin), 2025
Plywood, plexi, documents, acrylic, cellophane tape
73 x 24 x 24 in (185.4 x 61 x 61 cm)
“...Several works in the show reference the late Maryland street rapper Goonew who tragically passed away after being gunned down in his own neighborhood. Upon his wishes, his wake was held on stage at a DC nightclub, where instead of being in a casket, his body was stood up on stage in a designer outfit with his family partying next to him. This drew a lot of controversy, but only because it deifies the typical western ideas around death. I honestly commend Goonew for how he took control of his own death, to go out the way he wanted. Pictures of him from his wake have been placed in the provisional casket placed standing up in the gallery.
There have been parallels made between gangsters and samurai, as they both live in a stoicism stoked on the edge of their own demise, and from that relationship to death and the harnessing of it through music, a kind of life is created. Black Noise ends with a clip I took at a show by late DC area artists Goonew and Lil Gray, where even though someone set off the fire alarm, they kept on performing, because despite the blaring noise of helicopters or otherwise that drown out the streets of DC, the people still persist. And like Skino’s watch, they still shine. As a people, as black people, we turn water into wine, we turn our deaths into life, and that's why I put a damn casket in the space. Amen.”