At the beginning of the pandemic, I got a call from a friend telling me to come get my things out of my studio. At that time, we had no idea how long the “lock down” would last. We didn’t even really understand what was happening. We just knew everything was shutting down; and my studio was where I’d moved my tools for making paintings and collages. I needed everything with me. 

My intention had been to build an installation inside my studio where I’d perform some of my writing inspired by a letter written about my great grandmother Rosa. The letter was meant to stop my great grandmother from living her freedom of choice in love and sexuality. Though her first husband, my great grandfather, had ascended as an ancestor, she found new love; and a community member decided that was not her right. This letter resonated with me alongside other stories about women in my family passed on by word of mouth in the whispered hush saved for secrets, stories passed on like contraband. Stories of women refusing to be boxed, labeled, controlled, or silenced. Some did not end well. But they live inside possibilities through me. I wanted to build an installation that would be a shrine to these women and their stories - a shrine to intimacy, despite the battles waged on and in the name of women’s bodies and lives; hostile take-over attempts. I wanted to build a shrine in refusal of that tradition of violence and erasure. 

But the times redirected all of that; the pandemic shut down the studio and the organization which made its rental possible. So, my eldest daughter and I got on the 4 train to retrieve my belongings. The train car was virtually empty, and we moved fast once we arrived. I brought everything home to my bedroom. And, in the depths of the unknown we all experienced in the early days of the pandemic, the shrine I’d planned for the installation in my studio began to emerge in the intimate space of my bedroom. I still haven’t quite figured out how to share all that has evolved here out of my own urgent necessity to conjure devotional gris gris  as I walk my road in these wildly unpredictable and beautiful times. But I will begin here:

Title of video: simba simbi/hold onto what holds you up/grow into your own name, nam. march 2021.