Spit Shine (Ongoing)

"Spit Shine" is a documentary project that chronicles the multidimensional relationships that generations of African Americans across the Midwest and South forge with one another, the natural and material world, and embodied memory in the wake of difficult histories and their affective residue. This project originates in family photography. I began collaborating with family members as a teenager to visualize the particularities of being raised in Missouri. As I was brought closer to my great grandma, a former sharecropper from the Carolinas, my practice became increasingly animated by a personal investment in deeply contending with her painful relationship with cotton and drawing meaningful connections to the South. Moving part-time to rural North Carolina to get closer to her past, I work with black farmers who view themselves within a radical agricultural tradition, inspiring me to find truth in overlooked historical narratives and expand my notion of family. Weaving these diverse sensibilities together, I ultimately aim to disrupt the linear, narrow accounts that are often attached to these underrepresented regions to author a more complex story of African American heritage that relies on mutual understanding.

Prints from “Spit Shine” will be view at “dearmuthafuckindreams” at the Hessel Museum from April 5 to May 25, 2025 — a group show curated by Omar Jason Farah. They have also been exhibited in “THE (B)COMING” solo exhibition with Art on the Block NYC (2024), “A Tapestry of Aliveness” group show at Magnum Foundation (2024), and “Exceed Your Vision” group show at Princeton University (2024). This body of work has been created with the support of the Martin A. Dale ‘53 Fellowship and Magnum Foundation New York City Fellowship.