YOU’VE MADE THIS HOUSE YOUR HOME

A house is a body

Good bones/bad bones

A house is a system that keeps us safe, grounds our identity, that helps us know our place in the neighborhood

A house is a history that we curl up with each night; it is hidden
A house is a fallacy, a bastion of privilege, and erroneous nature
An unending legacy of bias or violence

 A home is a feeling, a person, a way of being, where we live out our beliefs, carrying it with us 

And so, we must be careful what house we make our home

You’ve Made This House Your Home is an ever-evolving installation comprised of ornamental mixed-media works that unearth the silenced, concealed, and erased narratives of the Black diaspora,  my personal experiences as a biracial Black woman, and the foundational systems of oppression that continue to influence contemporary culture. This project delves into themes surrounding respectability politics, their interconnectedness with White Supremacy and colonization, and the dual role they play in both advancing and dismantling communities. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois' essay "The Talented Tenth" and rooted in hidden American histories such as The Pearl Incident, the project draws from scholarly insights provided by figures like E. Franklin Frazier, Sabrina Strings, and the literary influence of Margot Jefferson. 

In this project, I employ the metaphor of a house to represent the social systems and constructs in which we live, often complacently without questioning their foundations. Drawing from the real estate term "bad bones," which describes a house's foundation and its ability to withstand the test of time, I extend this term to characterize the societal structures we inherit and perpetuate generationally or those we adopt to contextualize our present lives. Ornamental assemblages throughout the installation create layers of codes and constructs specifically felt within the Black community. 

These pieces reconfigure each time they are installed, retaining remnants from past iterations, thereby creating a living history within the artwork itself.