I am grateful for the opportunity to work within TNAS. An artist residency offers the rare gift of time, space, and intentional focus, elements that have largely been absent from my creative life. Having always worked in improvised, shared, or constrained environments, a dedicated space of my own allows me to think, experiment, and take creative risks without interruption. Solitude and immersion are vital to my process; they give me room to explore new ideas, reflect on lived experience, and let my work evolve organically. A residency creates the conditions for deeper inquiry, growth, and transformation.
I am excited by the opportunity to create new work that reflects an accumulation of the past four years of travel, study, and artistic transformation. My practice has been shaped by contemporary Black artists such as Kehinde Wiley and Harmonia Rosales, whose work around reclamation, beauty, and representation continues to inform how I position myself within art history.
My time in Florence, Rome, and Sicily, alongside my experiences in Morocco, has been profoundly transformative. The imagery of Moroccan art, from the saturated colors of Jardin Majorelle to the cultural dialogue preserved in the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech, expanded my understanding of how place shapes visual language. My growing interest in Islamic art, particularly its geometry, ornamentation, and spiritual symbolism, connects deeply to my lived experience within Byzantine inspired cathedrals such as San Vitale and the Cappella Palatina, spaces where I encountered the sublime firsthand.
I hope to synthesize all of these influences into an amalgamation of the histories, places, and artists that have shaped my vision over the past four years.