Worldbuilder. Writer. Illustrator. Director. Energy Worker.
I have intentionally stepped back from curating and event planning since 2020; however, my skills in large-scale organization, detail management, group management, and aesthetic curation remain active.
Curatorial Statement:
For all my work, I cultivate caring research, personal attention, and work that transcends aesthetics. When I curate, I seek to bring together not just works or performances, but people. In my programming, I highlight works by people experiencing marginalization through events that are both vibrant in energy and thoughtful in content. I connect artists who are unconsciously vibrating together and use my organizational skills to give them all a space to sing. My purpose is to create space to uplift all people, especially Black artists as gods, and to bring balance and truth to their experiences. This could take the form of gallery exhibitions or queer joy events such as dance parties. My ultimate goal is to connect all to the Unconscious through self-love and divine awakening.
September 2024 Cunty: Unholy
I stopped event planning in 2020 due to the pandemic, however for my 30th birthday I decided to throw one more large event as a good bye to my career as an event planner and to my twenties, which was dominated by that lifestyle.
I collaborated with DJ Love and their event Cunty, to create Cunty: Unholy a bacchanal of dancing and interdimensional performances.
October 2019 Temple of Sirius
The Temple of Sirius is a sanctuary in honor of African astrological ancestry, our divine present, and the future we are crafting, all existing in one moment. This is not play but a place of pilgrimage for all people, but especially black people, with the intention of waking the divinity within the observer in this colorful and meditative place. Marginalization, trauma, and an ingrained erasure are experienced as systems — and passed generationally— but through collectivity within art and expression we can rewrite patterns and remember who we are. Each individual being's experience is a direct manifestation of creation energy and therefore is never alone. Art, as the energy release of our universe, is never a solo process, as we are unconsciously connected and influenced by each other, by other realities, by the earth, tangerines, the moon, trout, smog, woven fabric, skyscrapers, gnats; the list is infinite. The energy of each artist and artwork has found each other once again, and even your energy as an observer has returned to us; welcome back to the Temple of Sirius. You can find more details at the DVAA website.
June-August 2019 Children of Sirius
Children of Sirius was a 3-part performance and gallery exhibition I created as the 2019 Black Box Curatorial Fellow at Vox Populi. The gods have come down to revel in your concepts of time and dimensions. They come as black humanoids, as expansive minds, as artists. This is a declaration, a feast, a war-cry, and a lullaby. Together these voices proclaim that their experience is divine. For 2 nights, 7 Black artists/deities performed in the Black Box of Vox Populi, followed by an exhibition of sacred relics in Vox’s front gallery space. Click these links to read more about Day 1, Day 2, and the Children of Sirius exhibition.
June 2019 Garden of Earthly Delights
Bartram’s Gardens invited me to create a queer, costumed Summer Solstice spectacular in southwest Philadelphia. Participants came in costumes that played with a magical forest creature theme. There was dancing, a costume contest, and bacchanal of drag and queer performances! Local, Black-owned vegan caterer We Are Earf provided the food, and BB Basura did the DJing!
GAUDLIKE is a living expression of joy, intersectional queer unity, and divinity. Each of the 14 collaborators of this project is a god, a creator. Through fashion, photography, craft, digital art, poetry, performance, and installation, this group is GAUDLIKE and radiant in our queer splendor, play, and unashamed self-love. Special thanks to IndyHall co-working space.
September 2018 GAUDLIKE
April 2018 Brown Sugar
A POC Self-Love Event Sponsored by Nybee Beauty Products. Free Hair Care, Cuts, and Loc services were offered, along with performances, collaborative art projects, and vegan food from the Black-owned caterer We Are Earf.
O:O stands for "othered others." This phrase recognizes Black people who feel marginalized or even persecuted within the Black community, the arts community, and the Black arts community. This was the 5th annual 2-day festival of all mediums. A celebration of radical Black joy!
February 2018 O:O Our Black Arts Festival
July 2017 NYC Poetry Festival
I was an invited artist at the NYC Poetry Festival, where my Mushroom Muses and I (Mother Hawkmoth) sold my illustrations and performed poetry accompanied by improvisational dance and audience participation.
May 2017 EP Release for Kingsley Ibeneche
I curated an EP Release debut and party for Kingsley Ibeneche at the Circle of Hope Gallery Space. In addition to Kingsley Ibeneche's performance, the night featured two opening acts, Lauren Scott and Echelon the Seeker, plus various dance performances and a dance party!
February 2017 Black Arts Festival
For 3 years, I curated the annual Black Arts Festival in Philadelphia, PA. It is a multi-day event with a gallery exhibition, musical performances, monologues, and poetry. The Black Arts Festival is a radical celebration of Black Joy that brings people together to unite as a community, recharge, and celebrate Black Excellence.
In 2017, the festival was 2 days, February 3rd and 4th, at the Circle of Hope Gallery Space in South Philadelphia. We had over 40 artists, and over 500 people visited and celebrated with us.
December 2016 Free First Sunday at the Barnes Foundation
For the Barnes Foundation's December 2016 Free First Sunday, I brought in three performance groups that fit the theme of "Sensation." I wanted to capture the diverse and sometimes overwhelming textures of the Barnes Foundation Collection through the percussion-based rhythm band, AveNoir, the zany performance art group Yackez, and the internationally renowned Opera tenor Richard Troxell.
March 2015 Millennium Oblivion
Millennium Oblivion was my first major curated event during my Sopomore year at the University of the Arts. The concept of the show was to have a major gallery and performance exhibition without the aid of the University. We had over 40 performance and visual artists, and over 200 people in attendence.