The Veil Is Thin
(2024)

Collage on glass with acrylic paint, ballast, fabric, tissue paper, vintage gold frame
28”x32”

This collage is about land, colonization, enslavement, and naming that the history of genocide, ensalvement and exploitation cannot be concealed. The truth is in plain sight before us.

The imagery in this collage includes: Cleopatra Jones (from 1970’s blaxploitation films)—I am drawn to using her image subversively, as a figure who is protecting her people and reclaiming her agency; a cotton gin; paper doilie; an image depicting Kentucky’s “first settlement”; a map detailing “Wilderness Road,”—a route used by colonizers to navigate through Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and further west; a vintage Marlboro ad with images of horses. The center image is a photograph of a painting representing a “treaty” between colonizers and indigenous folks in Kentucky. I layered tissue paper, painted with gold ink, around the image, covering the majority of the colonizers’ bodies, and bringing focus to the original stewards of Turtle Island and Kentucky land.

I also incorporated a note I wrote on a typewriter that reads: “my dear friend, my hope is elsewhere…i have to see what awaits me. i’m terrified, but i must go to fulfill the groaning & yearning in my soul. will you come? i am carrying the spirits of: margaret garner, juliet miles, harriet hayden, hannah toliver, eliza harris, rosetta armstead/anderson, keziah carter, harriet tubman.”

The women listed, aside from Harriet Tubman, are all black women who either freed themselves from slavery in Kentucky or assisted others in gaining freedom in Kentucky.