March 31st - April 13th 2023
Screw Gallery, Leeds
This work is part of what I lovingly like to call “nigga body surrogates”, the pieces serve as representations of various parts of my form, and the black form in general.
Since art people love the term “black bodies” so much, i went ahead and made some
One of the inspirations behind the concept comes from my background as a fashion designer/stylist. Wherein building a whole look you have to think about the entire body, head to toe and everything in between. Constructing those pieces in reference to specific parts of the body and how those pieces interact with one another. In the act of “styling”. In the words of designer Shayne Oliver, “if your toes not right, then you don’t have a look”. Details are everything.
This work is sort of birthed out of that hyper awareness of every part of the body, in personal and professional style. “How does my hair look with my hat? How does my chest look in my shirt and how does it drape over my pants?” The clothes used in the pieces are also reflections of how I dress in reaction to that hyper awareness. Using mostly just tees, durags and baseball caps, anyone that knows me, knows that I don’t like “fussy” clothes, I hate having to fix myself and adjust every two seconds, making sure my pants stack right on my pants, fuck all that.
The audio component, a speaker at the side of a deconstructed back pack of the same brand i had as a kid ( high sierra ) is based on a simple real life reference, the boys who walked around my high school with a bluetooth speaker in they hand or they backpack. Music blasting at 9 in the morning playin the most aggressive trap music possible, and I’m not gonna lie that shit had me mad irritated. But looking back, I have this almost strange appreciation for it. To have that level of confidence to be able to disrupt shit wherever you go. Asserting your black presence, unapologetically.
The projection and monitor were placed around the stomach, playing music and video by Q Da Fool, a rapper from around my way. The intensity of it alludes to the tense gut feeling you have in your stomach when you in certain “situations”. The video can played off a media player but i like to load it off a computer and play video straight from youtube, poignant especially due to the fact that my young niggas that was walking round then and still probably walking around now, were more than likely playing the music off of youtube, cuz it was free.
In an exhibition setting I encourage the gallery sitter to play youtube videos on it.
The music video I chose is significant because it’s by a “local” rapper, I say that in quotes because I find the term “local artist” to be kind of a loaded term. It implies that they haven’t enough success to leave, that they aren’t bigger than where they are local to, one of the biggest up and coming R&B artists in the world right now, Brent faiyez, is from the suburbs of Maryland, but no one here calls him a local artist.
But back to the point
The rapper in the video, lil dude, is from around the corner from me, I went to school with a fair number of people from his crew, so you can imagine people in my area would probably be pretty invested in his career. When I was in high school he was beefing with a Texas rapper named trill Sammy, and I remember when lil dude dropped his diss track in response, titled “30 day barred notice” the day it was out niggas was blasting it in class standing on the tables and I believe auxing it through the PA in the ceilings cuz our teacher let us do that.
The point is that, the music, and the people, caused disruption. And that disruption, that assertion and control of space is what calls out from this piece
A lot of this project is highly referential of style cues from a specific period of time, what niggas in my area and high school was wearing, when I well, was in high school (13’-17’) what they were listening to, and my transition from that in to being an “artsy” “alternative” nigga and the push and pull between what I kept, and what I chose to leave behind, And the social friction I experienced as a result. The closer I got to being myself, the bigger the rift it put between me and most of those immediately around me, but then finding myself doubling back and almost reverting to some of those same cues I drifted away from and this project is in a way a love letter to all of that.
10th grade I was listening to drake, lil Wayne, lot of young money and mainstream stuff, chief keef, and asap Rocky. wearing polo, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi’s, air lebrons, Michael kors and wanting north face. 11th grade I was listening to carti uzi, but still keef and Rocky I was wearing raf adidas and vans and Gosha and stussy but still wanted Nikes, just different ones, still wanted Levi’s and north face, just different ones.
The pieces I wanted in 10th grade I had wanted so bad, and felt so inadequate for not having them, just to not even care about them and to have moved on to something else. And one pair of shoes in particular, the total air foamposite max, almost as if a hold over from that pre “artsy” period, that shoe is one that I had been wanting for about 10 years, the last time it released was in 2011. That shoe is like a legendary DC area shoe, and in that seeming return to what I had parted from, (pretty much looking like a normal nigga from around the way again) I said that as soon as I got some money I would buy them after all these years.
And I did
And when I wore them for the first week it was like some childlike satisfaction was fulfilled, and when ever I wear them, heads are like “yo you still got those?!”, “ I aint seen them in forever” or just pointing them out or how much they loved that shoe and how bad they wanted it. I mean when I was a kid it felt like everyone had a pair
Then piece by piece, the shoes started to fall apart, because they were so old, I was glueing parts of the sole back on at least once a week. the way the shoes seeming disintegration, and my attachment to it goes with the idea of our relationship to the past, what we hold on too, what we choose to let go of, and the fading romantic nature of memory. Its almost poetic
That same shoe, has been recreated in a ghostly distressed fashion with silicone.
The plexi glass in the work alludes to spaces engineered to serve the less than savory habits of the ghettos of America, that disengage from interacting with the inhabitants of the community outside of a transactional context. Not allowing congregation of niggas cuz of what “trouble” they might bring.
Being served fried food, cigarettes and alcohol from behind bulletproof glass by people that don’t know you and don’t look like you, with no seating so you won’t be encouraged to gather.
With signs inside like “don’t beat on the counter” like kids would do while waiting for their food, because it’s “disruptive”
I remember how I used to be annoyed when other kids would walk around with a speaker on full volume but looking back I have a new found appreciation for this assertion of presence, this disruption to the norms and standards of that space, which then creates new norms and new standards.