“I covet overlooked physical and emotional evidence—traces, memories, and assumptions—of lived experiences. Using found and original footage my work honors and embraces time as a malleable and receptive container for my decidedly feminine, slightly subversive, personal yet universal excavations. Elements of discovery, empowerment, and seduction appear frequently. As a bricoleur, I collect the unexpected.”  ”

“Acting as photographer, ethnographer, and historian I am examining the erasure of material, spiritual, and familial cultural artifacts of people of the African Diaspora. Historical and ethnographic research of material and spiritual culture of Africans brought to the new world is explored and used as symbolic elements within the artwork. These artifacts and symbols are combined with western material trappings of status and wealth. These works act as resurrection and reintroduction to practices and traditions that were melded within the Americas as well as a visual conversation of what we as a people deem worthy of the title “artifact’’ or “of value”.  The body of work within ‘Reclamation’ shifts the traditional visual narrative of the viewer confronting the subject. Each piece is anchored to beauty that is a subversive visual rebellion. The subjects in the works cry for autonomy from the gaze of those that have, and would otherwise oppress them. ‘Reclamation’ challenges a narrative of Black being worth less-than. Descendants of the Diaspora, despite having had all overt signs of their histories, former cultural status, diverse and primal spiritual practices erased when they were brought to the Americas, endured, existed and matter. The exhibition serves to reconstitute and re-present our connection to spiritual and cultural connections that never truly disappeared. In this exhibition, these same symbols act psychologically to shift the embedded common narrative of the viewer of Blackness away from race and subjugation, and towards an expanded perception; a visual elevation of the subjects as powerful and holy in their own humanity. ”

““So much of Native American history has been recorded and told by non-Natives. But I think it’s time we use our own voices to tell our story. I think it is fundamentally important for Native Americans to preserve our culture for future generations. As a photojournalist I help do that visually, by making photographs and video of Native American life. And as an Apsáalooke (Crow), it is my deepest desire to document the life and culture of my tribe so that my children and all the children of the Apsáalooke will have it as record for future generations.” ”