Precious Artifacts (Work In Progress) is a series of handmade platinum & palladium prints on translucent fine art Japanese gampi (washi) paper backed with gold leaf. Precious Artifacts is a body of work that activates my family archives that are passed down from generation to generation as a means of transferring knowledge and cultural heritage through objects or artifacts, photographs, old newspapers, obituaries, traditions, and oral histories, to name a few, has long been a practice that strengthens cultural ties, wisdom, and history in the black community.
Cultural heritage encompasses collective memory for future generations to learn about events related to our family's history through interaction with the artifacts. These artifacts are returned to the places and spaces my ancestors inhabited through chattel slavery and forced migration.
This series visually interprets the feeling of nostalgia as finding the promise and possibility within my ancestral journey requires considering their lives on their terms and, when available, in those spaces. I use reflective moments as creative inspiration while moving across the spaces and places tied to my ancestry.
