Submitted as a final project in Dr. Cornell West’s Race and Modernity class and inspired by the writings of Toni Morrison and her continual exploration of the motifs of house and home. I gave 5 black artists questions to explore the House / Home Dichotomy and together we captured their responses through portrait photography and artistic expression.
Inspired by the writings in:
Over the course of 2022-’24 I am photographing 52 Goddesses, deities, and Female Divinities across sacred traditions. The first was Oshun, Orisha of the rivers, Goddess of Water. We photographed Isabel Lorrayne in a waterfall on the outskirts of the Jardim Botanico in Rio de Janeiro. To get there we hiked in the 90-degree heat in our flip-flops through arched trees with roots bulging from the ground and up a cascading series of falls. Oshun is the mother, she aids in creative flow and fertility. The final 52 photoshoots will be submitted as part of my master's thesis on feminist theology. Follow on Insta for more.
How do we engage in Biblical texts that seem entirely outdated and irrelevant? That question has been guiding me ever since realizing how deep my classmates went with this project completely taking on new identities and revealing parts of themselves they normally keep hidden. Inspired by the writings of Nicole Simopoulus, I gave 13 Union Theological Seminary the same texts of Hagar Story in Genesis, Galatians, and the Hadith. Then had them read each one, and write down their reflections. We reconvened to talk about where they saw themselves, what they felt, what memories did this invoke, and who were they? And finally, I photographed each person’s reflections. The result was an intimate methodology of sacred text analysis and interpretation. The project is still ongoing, if you would like to be a part please reach out.
“For me, the Bible is an elastic, resilient friend who bounces back and even talks back when I question it… The Bible belongs to anyone who will love it, play with it, push it to its limits, touch it, and be touched by it - and the same is true for God.” - Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson
If this is true, can the most historically terrorizing Biblical text be played with collectively, creatively, and empoweringly? Could it be reclaimed by the queer community or reframed to be a text of wisdom with historical analyses? These questions were at the root of my social media project in which I presented 4 friends (who identified as Queer, non-binary and Queer Ally in exploration) Genesis 19 1:29 (Sodom and Gomorrah) as asked to photograph them inside of the story as the angels. Together we went back and forth discussing the text over the phone or through IG messenger, and collectively explored the texts and the greater concept of “angels” in sacred texts and in society. What unfolded were two days of photographing angels in their lustrous Queer glory smashing not only millennia of an abusive lens on this text, but also assumptions around what it is to be an angel in a historical context of white babies with wings inspired by Roman art.
Read the Final Paper Here-
Fallen Angels: Queering Sodom and Gomorrah through embodying their Angelic Protagonists
(You can see more images from this project on my IG.)
Few people in history have captured the attention of fashion, social, political, legal, religious and feminist spheres as much as the 19-year-old prophet, warrior and “maid”, who was tried as a heretical witch and canonized as a saint. Her brief time in the spotlight, a matter of two years was so profound that her legend had been used as a totem for feminists, she’s become a queer icon, a war hero, a revolutionary, a fashion muse, and an unassailable legendary disruptor. It was precisely her disruption of the patriarch and queering historical norms that eventually got her killed, but it is also what has made her live forever as an immortal legend.
Joan broke the binaries for women that you are either saintly or slutty and showed the world here is a dynamism to being a woman, to being human, not just a witch or saint, virgin or whore. My project is in a paper or photographic form, examining the life and legacy of Joan of Arc, and how her non-binary presentation threatened the patriarchy and was a motif in European witch hunts that were built atop a legacy of Mary or Eve misogyny. It will conclude with an examination of Joan’s trial situated within the larger witch hunt history and finally how the myth of Joan serves as a needed tool in the collective imagination to emblemize queer living and its possibility for liberation.
Read the final Paper here:
Neither Witch of Saint but Immortal: The Life and Legacy of Joan of Arc
(You can see more images from this project on my IG.)
This project was for Dr. David Carr’s Book of Isaiah class at Union Theological Seminary, Fall ‘23.
To dive deeper into my passage: Isaiah 49:14-26 I gave a variety of people the same text and prompted them through an interview and subsequent photoshoot. The following is the text from the presentation of the final project at Judson Memorial Church on Sunday, December 10, 2023, as part of the advent message.
The visual format of the final project is HERE.
“This text we just read according to Biblical Scholar (and my Isaiah class professor) Dr. Carr, is the one passage of the Bible in which God is personified as a mother.
Mother God.
Now in my Isaiah class over these last three months, we have dove deep into the three divisions of Isaiah that span over 500 years covering the colonization and exile of the Judeans from their land.
A vast expanse of trauma and horrors that afflicted generation after generation. Empire conquering, domination, expulsion, return to homeland, and again.
In class conversations, we looked at how the subsequent actions and Hebrew Bible texts reflect this level of trauma, the desire for codified religious practice, the expulsion of foreigners, the need to feel seen and have a fortified identity and culture.
To understand harmful language in the specific texts it was helpful to look at them through this ens of trauma. Ahhhh- “Your oppressors will eat their own flesh” What horrors have happened to you that this seems justified and desired?
This chapter of Isaiah was likely written in the late Exilic period. The ancient Judeans had been in exile in Babylon and had witnessed the Babylonian Empire sack their cities, destroy their sacred temple in Jerusalem and now were preparing to return.
What stood out for me the more I read this text with pronounced female pronouns for both God and Zion. Especially in the framing of these lines between Zion is a warrior male in the beginning of chapter 49, and right after in chapter 50 when Zion is an unfaithful bride and God is a husband who abandons her… But these lines are her, daughter Zion, and her mother God….
The positioning in line 18 of Zion a broken young woman on the ground and God asking her to lift her head up, the people who have laid you waste have left.
In all the wrath of colonization throughout Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian Empires dominating the Judean people, sexual violence is not explicitly mentioned as a part of this conquering the other. But here in lines 14-26 it is as if the author turns to those women and says “I see you, I have not forgotten you and all that you have endured.”
Now for my final in this class, I wanted to explore other people's reactions to this text, and do some creative exegesis with them. So what you are about to see is the result of that.
I gave 6 people the same text and some thinking points to reflect on as they read:
Who are you in this story or how does your life experience relate to the story?
What does this story bring up for you emotionally? Are there colors, sensations, and feelings that come to the surface?
What does this story bring up from your past?
If the story continued, what would happen?
I gave them time to read and reflect, and then when they were ready we did an interview. From that interview, we imagined a visual representation of their experiences within the text.
And then we did a photoshoot to make it come to life… And to affirm… I see you. I love you.”