The Music

The Artist

process/purpose of elements:

Red and blue shades used to represent both the political party lines and blood lines mixing over time. Miscegenation became relevant in the American lexicon because of Democrats using it to slander Republicans in the 1860 elections.

Blood line colors represent the class divide and mixing that happened during and after colonialism. American upper-class society, those descended from slave & plantation owners, are described as “Blue bloods”. Included to emphasize the wealth divide between the “protected” and “brutalized” by the anti-miscegenation laws that existed in America between 1860’s and 1967’s landmark decision of Loving V. Virginia.

Paint shades used: 

Winsor Blue

Metallic Blue

Turquoise Blue

Light Blue

Light Violet

Metallic Purple

Blush Pink

Portrait Pink

Pyrrole Red

Cochineal Red

The body is a combination of male and female bodies, combined to tie in the place of trans*people in the societal conversation. The body is molded with casting wrap. Then painted in gradients from eggshell to midnight black, representing the mixing of ethnicities/blood lines. Once painted, the body is  covered in natural elements that evolve as the eye moves from the feet up to the head. Each element/body area is representative of a period of time in the abolition of anti-miscegenation laws, over which the body is laid. 

From Bottom to top:

dirt/trash (feet/ground) -> 1967 Loving v. Virginia verdict overturned laws in AL, AK, DE, FL, GA, VA, KY, LA, MI, MS, NC, OK, SC, WV, & TX

dead leaves & weeds (ankles/shins to knees/mid thighs) -> 1948-1967 States that overturned their anti-miscegenation laws seeing the pending climate around race and desegregation. These states are listed in order of the year. As:

1948-CA

1953- MONTANA

1955- ND

1957- CO

1959- ID

1959- NV

1962- AZ

1963- UT

1963- NEBRASKA

1965- WY

1965- INDIANA

1967- MARYLAND

healthy plant stems and leaves (mid thigh to upper torso) -> Pre 1900’s, specifically 1776-1887 from our founding as a country. Some of these states overturned their anti-miscegenation laws before they even acquired their statehood. These states in order are listed:

1780- PA

1843- MA

1851- IO

1859- KS*

1866- NM*

1868- WA*

1874- IL

1881- RI

1883- MI

1883- MAINE

1887- OH

**stars indicate pre-statehood reversals. 

healthy stems and flowers (breast/collar bone, neck & lover jaw area)->Pre-1776. These states listed at the top, each correlating with a flower in the body as these are the only 9 states that have never had any type of anti-miscegenation laws ore legislation whatsoever, from their founding until present day. These states are :

AL, CT, HI, MINNESOTA, NH, NJ, NY, VT & WI.

The natural elements are then sealed to the body form with resin. Natural elements were included in the body to illustrate my guiding thoughts about miscegenation:

1. Anti-miscegenation laws, were an extension of colonialism and another way the government sanctioned the dehumanization of black people and women of all “races”. Whether in the ways laws were written and designed to perpetuate the myth of black men being “inherently violent”,  “animals”, and “savages” by claiming to need to protect white women from their savagery. This allows white women to assume “victimhood” on a whim and be treated as the property of white men. At the same time these laws reinforced the brutalization of Black women, as during slavery. It also gave strength to the ”jezebel” trope which allowed Black women to be painted and portrayed as hyper sexualized seductresses rather than the victims of generations of rape and other assaults of White men. It also contributed to the divide between women as a movement. 

2. Miscegenation is nothing more than the evolution of nature. As simple as survival of the fittest.  The man made construct of race is what has haunted the evolution of humanity to heal the wounds caused by slavery. Anti-miscegenation legislation maintained the dehumanized state of non-white classified people by criminalizing the human function of love and natural biological imperative of copulation for the survival of the species known as the human race. 

3. In the year 2020, the idea of any person, of any ethnicity (or “race”), in any country that had once been colonized, is preposterous, or at least highly improbable. Especially, and specifically in the United States of America. I chose to illustrate this with the addition of the self-portrait piece at the top. The portrait, a collaboration with my 11 year old daughter, uses lyrics from Talib Kweli’s interpretation of Nina Simone’s “4 women” on the Reflection Eternal album. The track is titled “Expansion Outro”. The song I believe beautifully translates the effects of anti-miscegenation laws on Black women. By sharing my ancestry results along with phases that I identify with and as, against the gradients of brown shaded skin, tie in my personal narrative to the collective generational traumas of all Black women. 

4. In the year of “Black Lives Matter” and all other associated social uprisings, it is us, the products of miscegenation, that are building the new world, so to speak. It is those that wish to maintain the binaries of the world,  that are dying out. Thinking on it as an artist, and a so-called social scientist, I’d conclude that this is the will of nature that we all blend into an indistinguishable form.  

5. Religion was a tool of control and oppression utilized by the powers that be. The canvas’ are purposefully placed to resemble the shape of a cross. Christianity was the main religion of the colonizers. Across the globe colonization was made possible by the idea of “Manifest Destiny” that one type of people were ordained by God to run over all the lands and peoples of the Earth. I think it is important to include an analysis of religion and its applications in colonies and late in developing states. In in a nation that supposedly has a separation of church & state, there is a surprising amount of discriminatory laws, included anti-miscegenation laws, that are clearly religious/faith based edicts. It also speaks to how miscegenation (or the anti laws) effect people of the LGBTQ community today who only received the right to marry under federal law in 2015.