Because the human being is the connecting creature who must always separate and cannot connect without separating-that is why we must first conceive intellectually of the merely indifferent existence of two river banks as something separated in order to connect them by means of a bridge.

         – George Simmel, Bridge and Door, 1909

 

W.E.B. Dubois describes the concept of double consciousness as the lack of true self-consciousness and only seeing ones self through the eyes of others.

 

It is within this structure that I redefine the conventions aligned with black male identity and its representations

in photographic image. Using the framework of poetics, the actions of overlay, juxtaposition, and confrontation become a process of

metamorphosis for the subjects.

 

It is within the medium’s rejection of a singular definition that I deconstruct the body to the point of disembodiment, discovering and reorienting the borders between otherness and sameness. By uniting images, and in some cases disparate materials, I look to separate and connect the boundaries that define the figure.

 

The collaged bodies stress fixed borderlines that represent states of multiple identities, where pasts, presents and futures conflate. These meeting points formed through the physical cuts represent the point to which contour and shape allude to points of departure where borders are allocated and crossed.

 

It is the shift between my artistic practice and my interests in Queer theory, Negritude

and Science Fiction that direct me towards a transgressed dialogue of race, class, and sexuality.