Artist Statement

My ceramic sculptures function as “future artifacts” that remix ancestral traditions, respond to contemporary realities, and envisions resilient futures. Influenced by hip hop culture and science fiction, I use clay as both material and metaphor, building forms that I inscribe with thousands of etched lines made by a needle tool. These marks accumulate into patterns that echo hair, raffia, scars, rituals, and inscriptions. Texture becomes a conduit to archive memory, offering new understandings of how time and repetition can be recorded in material form.
I work with black and brown clays to reflect how the African Diaspora moves through time and space while affirming the beauty of Blackness. In African and other Eastern cultures, black is understood as the color of knowledge, standing in contrast to the Western framing of white as purity. My research into West African textiles and adornment, such as kente cloth and the Ashetu, or Prestige hat, of the Bamileke people of Cameroon worn primarily by the elite during rituals and ceremonies, symbolizes authority and accomplishment. This investigation has pushed me toward experimenting with porcelain and colored porcelain.
By mixing porcelain with mason stains, I create distinct color clays, manipulating tone the way a DJ manipulates a sample. This remix transforms inherited materials into new forms that challenge the hierarchy of ceramic traditions and the cultural assumptions tied to color. By bringing porcelain, colored porcelain, and black and brown stoneware into conversation, the work moves past preservation alone, reflecting on how materials themselves carry contested histories and meanings while opening space for new futures to be imagined and manifested.