Loud Dreaming: Bow to Rapture (2019)
“In places where rain is light the thrill is almost erotic. But those sensations bow to the rapture of holy women dancing in hot sweet rain.” - Toni Morrison, Paradise
Loud Dreaming: The Voluptuaries (2019)
“To imagine Black women’s sexuality as a polymorphous erotic that does not exclude desire for men, but also does not privilege it. To imagine, without apology, voluptuous Black women’s sexualities.” — Cheryl Clarke, Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women
Loud Dreaming
Loud Dreaming draws inspiration from Toni Morrison’s Paradise and is rooted in Black feminist liberation thought and the literary traditions that inform it. I began composing these 19in x 25in collages in April 2019, shaping their visual language through a deep engagement with Caribbean and Black American novels, including Cereus Blooms At Night by Shani Mootoo (Trindad & Tobago) and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (USA).
Though the series contains only two works, it marks a pivotal point in my practice: extending from the Queering Cane series (2017) and sowing the conceptual seeds for Moonlight and Moonlight Blues, which I began in 2022.