About

From 2020-2022, I researched and uncovered suppressed images of Black women held in the photographic collections at the Art Institute of Chicago. With the images I found and researched, ranging from the 19th to 20th centuries depicting the exploitation and violence towards Black women in the United States, I excavated, re-photographed, re-captioned, and re-contextualized the original works. By engaging with these images via the intervention of my hands or by using my own body, I rescued and protected the Black women’s bodies and their humanity and unearthing their stories so that they may be seen and heard. With this work, entitled Our Mothers’ Gardens, inspired by Alice Walker’s text In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: A Womanist Prose (1983), I desired more than the visibility of Black women in institutional collections. I also desired for the massive issue around institutions holding and silencing collections of visible and (in)visible violent visual depictions of Black women to be further highlighted and appropriately corrected.

For 3 years, I have been in a unique position with this work where I’m currently exploring the possibility of returning images that I was willingly given by Peter J. Cohen, a vernacular image collector whose work I researched within the AIC photographic collection. He sent me a package of images to return to attempt returning to their loved ones and after taking a hiatus to work on other projects, I have returned to studying and researching these images with precious care.  

I am now spending my time using the information written on the front and/or back of the vernacular images to find the individuals’ loved ones and return them safely. I look forward to sharing this journey of returning these images and collaborating with fellow community members and various art and research professionals along the way. All images have been scanned to the highest quality.

For updates and more information, please follow @surely.you.know. on Instagram.