This Black body of mine is the vehicle determining my life. I have inhabited this body for just over two decades, and yet I feel I still cannot understand it; I cannot grasp who I feel I am, nor the history embedded within me. It is many things: one being the physical mapping of my genes from a line of ancestry displaced in the Americas for somebody else’s check. The transatlantic slave trade ended centuries ago, yet I still wonder who this body belongs to. These questions of identity and ownership exceed far beyond the personal. Ultimately, they have prompted the creation of I’ve Never Really Enjoyed Fruit.

This hyperreal scanograph is as much a form of documenting my body as it is a confrontation of the insurmountable blood shed from the lineage of Black people on (and off) American soil. Watch me. Look at me swing from this branch and notice how your own body responds to mine. At the core of this work is a seemingly simple question: How do we make our bodies our own? Autonomously and collectivity, may our bodies mourn the deaths fueled by the state of our nation.