Conceptual Materials Social Practice Artist
April is quiet.
One show, Expressive Creative Soul 2026 at Bridge Art Gallery and the rest is space.
No rush. No stacking deadlines. Just time back in the studio.
Focus feels different here. Slower. Sharper.
I can sit with an idea long enough to see if it holds.
Follow a thread without forcing where it ends.
There’s work forming, nothing loud yet.
Just materials shifting, small decisions adding up.
This isn’t a pause.
It’s pressure in the right place.
Less noise.
More making.
I’m happy to share that Power Puff and Black Racing Stripe has been selected for Fiber 2026, opening this Saturday at AlterWork Studios.
Fiber has always been a material of contradiction, soft yet resilient, domestic yet radical. This exhibition brings together artists working across traditional textile practices and contemporary fiber experimentation, showing just how expansive the medium has become.
For me, fiber is a language.
It holds tension.
It carries memory.
Power Puff and Black Racing Stripe sits within that conversation, playful on the surface, but rooted in deeper questions about identity, material culture, and the quiet power of making with our hands.
If you’re in New York, I hope you’ll stop by.
Opening Reception
Saturday, March 7, 2026
6–9 PM
On View
March 7 – March 28, 2026
Daily, 12–9 PM
📍 AlterWork Studios
40-20 22nd Street
Long Island City, NY
Learn more:
https://www.alterworkstudios.com/fiber
It’s always an honor to be in conversation with other artists working in fiber, stretching the medium, knot by knot, into new terrain.
I’m honored to share that my work will be included in FIBER 2026 at AlterWork Studios in Long Island City.
This exhibition gathers artists rooted in traditional fiber practices alongside those pushing the edges of contemporary textile work. It feels like home, structure and experimentation in the same room.
March 7–28, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7 | 6–9PM
AlterWork Studios
40-20 22nd Street, Long Island City, NY
I’ll be showing:
Power Puff, Black Racing Stripe Emotional Baggage Cart
We all carry emotional baggage.
Some of us push carts. Some carry backpacks.
I carry a lifetime of racial trauma.
This piece transforms BAD NEWS into something radiant. Plastic New York Post sleeves become structure. Gold becomes insistence. The black racing stripe becomes momentum.
I choose joyful resistance.
Not denial.
Alchemy.
If you’re in New York, come stand beside the cart.
Listen for the bell.
As Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths closes at Cummings Art Galleries, I keep thinking about thresholds.
Curated by nico w. okoro, the exhibition asked us to look closely at race, space, and place and to imagine something freer than the histories that shaped them. The work was soft in material, but steady in truth.
This show also held a first for me. It was the first time my poetry was shared publicly in a gallery. Seeing my words on the wall felt makes me feel exposed. And somehow exactly right. Another layer of my practice stepping into the light.
Borderlands aren’t theoretical for me. They live in the body. In identity. In the small adjustments we make to move through rooms not built with us in mind.
The show closing isn’t an ending. It’s an exhale.
The lights dim. The questions come home with me.
And the work continues.
March holds my work in two different spaces, each asking urgent questions about race, place, memory, and power.
January 20 – March 6, 2026
Closing: March 6
Cummings Art Galleries
Connecticut College, New London, CT
Borderlands dismantles the social constructs of race, space, and place, imagining an end to the colonial legacies that bind them.
The idea of borderlands feels deeply embodied in my practice, the Atlantic as archive, mixed race identity, code-switching as survival, material memory woven from what remains. Borders are not only geographic. They live in systems, in land, in the body.
This exhibition closes March 6.
February 21 – March 21, 2026
Bridge Art Gallery
Wilmington, DE
Celebrating ten years of bold creative voices, this exhibition includes my works Wonder Women Tapestry and Wonder Woman Selfie posters, centering Black womanhood as strength, complexity, and sovereignty.
Bridge Art Gallery has supported my journey for years, and I’m honored to be part of this milestone. Though I won’t attend in person, I’m there in spirit.
Two exhibitions. Different geographies.
One thread, truth, resilience, and the power of holding space.
On view through early March, Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths invites viewers into a critical and poetic reckoning with the social constructs of race, space, and place, and the enduring legacies of colonialism that bind them together.
Curated by Nico W. Okoro, the exhibition gathers works that sit in tension: soft gestures carrying hard truths, quiet materiality holding urgent questions. The artists resist fixed boundaries, instead imagining borderlands as sites of possibility—where histories are unsettled, identities are fluid, and inherited systems can be dismantled and reimagined.
Important update: due to the recent snowstorm, the opening reception originally scheduled for February has been rescheduled to March 2, 2026. The exhibition remains open to the public during its full run, and we look forward to gathering in person once conditions allow.
At a moment when borders, geographic, cultural, and ideological are increasingly weaponized, Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths offers space to pause, feel, and think differently. It asks what becomes possible when margins soften, when we listen across difference, and when art becomes a site for both reckoning and repair.
If you’re in the region, make time to experience the exhibition, and join us on March 2 to mark its opening together.
I’m honored to share that my work is currently on view in Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths, a powerful group exhibition curated by nico w. okoro in collaboration with Connecticut College’s Center for the Critical Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), commemorating CCSRE’s 20th anniversary.
The exhibition is on view January 20 – March 6, 2025 at the Cummings Arts Center, inside the Joanne Toor Cummings Gallery. The galleries are free and open to the public.
Monday, January 26, 2025
4:30 – 6:30 PM EST
Cummings Arts Center, Joanne Toor Cummings Gallery
Free and open to the public
I will be in attendance and would love to see you there.
Recovered marine line, sea-tumbled, woven and knotted with alpaca wool, fabric, acrylic yarn, beads, shells, washers, vintage watch parts, and deconstructed line.
Liminal Staff is an emblem of authority and sovereignty,, a sacred artifact that operates as a conduit between worlds. Crafted from recovered marine line shaped by hurricanes and tides, the work is layered with memory and intention. Each knot and material fragment carries a story reclaimed from chaos and transformed into a vessel of spiritual protection and ancestral reverence.
This piece emerges from the tension of being both tethered and adrift. It honors the countless lives lost to the Atlantic, the water graves of the enslave, and the resilience of those who survived. Bridging the living and the dead, land and sea, Liminal Staff echoes tidal pull and cyclical time. Conjure bags, locs of hair, and marine debris lend their essence, layering the work with magic, memory, and reclamation.
We are water’s kin. Like rivers flowing unerringly toward the sea, this piece speaks to our origins, our endurance, and the enduring human capacity to find our way home.
Recovered marine line, sea-tumbled, woven and knotted with eyelash yarn, acrylic yarn, deconstructed line, glass beads, shells, chain, and handmade bells.
Offering to the Lost Ones is a beacon of remembrance honoring the spirits lost during the transatlantic slave trade, while also reflecting on humanity’s ongoing disruption of the natural world. Shaped by storms, the materials carry dual histories, environmental devastation and the turbulent seas that bore witness to unimaginable human suffering.
Each knot, bead, and bell holds space for reflection, transforming debris into a solemn offering for those whose names dissolved into the depths of the Atlantic. Chains and bells converse with shells and glass, mirroring the tension between bondage and liberation, death and resilience.
This work calls us to remember the past while confronting the present. The sea holds ancestral grief and the scars of modern neglect. In this offering, mourning becomes a gesture toward healing, between people, memory, and the natural world.
Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths dismantles social constructs of race, space, and place, imagining an end to the living legacies of colonialism that continue to bind them. The exhibition features work by:
Ophelia Arc, Nic[o] Brierre-Aziz, Alexis Callender, Adger Cowans, Lewis Derogene, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Shabez Jamal, Fidelis Joseph, Nsenga Knight, Ron Norsworthy, Theda Sandiford, Toby Sisson, Dina Nur Satti, and Amanda Russhell Wallace.
If you’re nearby, I hope you’ll join us for the opening reception on January 26. These works are offerings of memory, of reckoning, and of repair and it means a great deal to share that space with you.
Inspired by the lush vegetation surrounding my rainforest property, Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody is built from close observation of what grows around me each day. I wove single-use plastic bottle caps into vines and floral forms, using color, repetition, and pattern to mirror the plants that hold my attention—orchids, heliconias, birds of paradise, and the dense, winding vines that thread through the landscape.
Working with discarded materials allowed me to translate the vibrancy of this environment while acknowledging the presence of plastic within it. The bottle caps become leaves, petals, and stems—familiar shapes rendered in synthetic form. The piece is less a replica of the rainforest than a response to it, shaped by daily proximity, care, and attention.
Installed within Meltdown, the work sat quietly in conversation with the exhibition’s broader themes, offering a moment rooted in observation and material transformation. The installation images document a process of looking closely, collecting slowly, and weaving what is already here into something new.
Meltdown: A Changing Climate has now closed at ArtsWestchester.
Installation photos: Maksim Akelin
January is a moment of transition; an opportunity to catch work as it closes and to step into what’s just beginning. This month, two exhibitions featuring my work come to a close, while a new exhibition opens shortly after. If you’re able to visit, I hope you’ll take advantage of these moments.
Meltdown: A Changing Climate
ArtsWestchester Galleries | White Plains, NY
October 12, 2025 – January 11, 2026
Meltdown: A Changing Climate brings together artists responding to the accelerating impacts of climate change and environmental instability. Through material, process, and form, the exhibition examines ecological vulnerability, resilience, and human responsibility in an era of environmental crisis.
Learn more ›
Interpretations 2025
Visions Museum of Textile Art | San Diego, CA
October 17, 2025 – January 10, 2026
Interpretations 2025 showcases innovative contemporary textile works that push the boundaries of fiber, materiality, and narrative. The exhibition coincides with Interpretations 2025 Festival Days, which included artist talks, awards, and community gatherings celebrating excellence in contemporary textile art.
Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths
Cummings Art Galleries, Connecticut College | New London, CT
January 20 – March 6, 2026
Opening Reception: January 26, 2026
Curated by nico w. okoro
Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths dismantles social constructs of race, space, and place, examining the enduring legacies of colonialism that shape lived experience. Through material and conceptual practices, the exhibition imagines borders not as fixed lines, but as contested and transformative spaces.
I’ll be in town for the opening reception and would love to connect—please reach out if you’re planning to attend.
I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be back in Newark this fall for Newark Arts Festival 2025: JOY, and I couldn’t be more excited! This festival is always such a special time to reconnect with friends I haven’t seen in far too long and to celebrate the incredible community of artists and supporters that call Newark area home. If you’re planning to attend, let’s definitely link up.
My celebrations kick off in style at The Gold Ball on October 8, 6–11pm at the Newark Museum of Art. From there, you’ll find my work in not one but two powerful exhibitions, each embracing JOY as a creative force that sustains, uplifts, and sparks transformation.
📍 Newark Museum of Art (49 Washington St, Newark, NJ)
🗓 October 8, 2025 – November 2, 2026
📍 Express Newark – Paul Robeson Galleries, Main Gallery (Third Floor, Hahnes Building, 54 Halsey St, Newark, NJ)
🗓 October 8, 2025 – November 26, 2026
🎉 Opening Reception: Thursday, October 9, from 5pm onward
Gallery Hours:
At Newark Arts Festival this year, we’re centering JOY, that golden state of being that connects us to our shared humanity. JOY is resistance. JOY is healing. JOY is transformation. My work joins many others in asking: What’s your JOY?
I can’t wait to celebrate, to see familiar faces, and to bask in the joy that art brings us all.
✨ Will you be there? Let me know, I’d love to catch up.