About the Works
70 × 35 in.
A Memory Reborn is a collage print using archival photos of Seattle from my mother's film archive of her time living here as a young adult in the 70s and 80s. The imagery montages scenes of the Seattle and the surrounding nature she documented overlaid by our silhouettes that are juxtaposed looking out on the landscape. The portrait of my mother in the bottom left was an archival photo of her on her porch as a young woman. My portrait in the top right was taken my mother the first year I moved here back in 2024, which was also the first time she had been back in Seattle since the 90s. In many ways I am retracing her path, traveling from the East Coast to West as she once did years ago. Her memories of Seattle were part of what inspired me to make the move myself—to experience the city and understand the ways it shaped her, and how it will now shape me.
This piece was created in response to the show being hosted here at Prairie Underground, with the intention to experiment on fabric and be in conversation to the materials of the clothing and the shop itself. I made the print using cyanotype, a method where exposure to sunlight forms the image through a chemical reaction. The light creates the picture itself, physically and metaphorically, the same way it brings these memories back to life in a new form.
A special thank you to Prairie Underground for donating the fabric, and specifically to Lilia for helping the sew the final piece. Additionally, thank you to Mr. Monwuba for allowing me to use his space and work at such a grand scale.
16 × 12 in.
The Makings of Home brings together archival family photos, my own photography, and found imagery to evoke the feeling of Haitian and broader Caribbean interiors, drawing on the elements that feel familiar within home spaces. The piece is inspired in part by my uncle's home in Port-au-Prince, particularly its columns, arches, openness, and indoor-outdoor quality, while combining those with motifs from other spaces I've experienced both in Haiti and through our diaspora in the US. Woven throughout are archival photographs of family, including my late aunt, gathered across moments and gatherings I know only in part. Ultimately, the piece considers how home can be carried through family, memory, and architecture, even across distance.
Collection of Annie Thermidor Grimes.
12 × 16 in.
This piece draws from my time living in Zanzibar, where I frequented local football matches. I wanted to capture the energy of these games and the liveliness of those spaces, from the activity on the field to the vibes in the stands. The field is also juxtaposed against a piece of architecture I loved, its stone and cement emblematic of Zanzibar to serve as a backdrop behind the scene. My time at the matches were some of the moments I enjoyed most during my time there for how alive the energy was. So in creating this piece, I wanted to hold the memory in an image I could relive over and over.
18 × 24 in.
Michenzani reimagines a bustling scene at the edge of Stone Town, Zanzibar—a major hub where much of the island converges, and a place I frequented often throughout my weeks living there between 2022-23. At the backbone of this piece is the Michenzani housing complex, a social-housing project built in the 1970s that spans several blocks in long, utilitarian rows. What fascinated me most was how much variety there was amongst the simplistic architecture, such as the range of window grill designs and the colors and patterns that have accumulated as the units were adapted over the years. Through observing the Michenzani complex as its aged, I could see the life of the town emerge through its architecture in ways that weren't there when it was first built. That life embodied through the buildings comes into form in the activity along the street. This is a space I frequented often, from catching the dala dala (local buses) to going to the local markets, and this piece was a way to commemorate my experience and memory of the time.
12 × 36 in.
This piece honors my late aunt Yolette, placing an archival photograph of her within a landscape built from my own photography during a road trip through Haiti. The scene moves through the country's central terrain, from Port-au-Prince up along the Artibonite River, as a tribute to the memory of that journey and a way to commemorate the range of the land itself.
18 × 18 in.
L'Observatoire sits in a space of contemplation, inspired by the vastness of the landscape around Port-au-Prince. It juxtaposes two images: a fisherman we saw while stopping along the coast, and in the foreground, the observatory overlooking the entirety of the city. Together, the background and foreground move from the edge of land to the top of the mountains. What struck me most about visiting Haiti was how beautiful the topography is, and how it created such sweeping views of the life of the city from that many vantage points.
19 × 40 in.
This piece captures street-level vignettes on Grand Rue in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, documenting how the landscape shifted over the course of a day. The images were gathered while spending several hours on the street back in 2018, watching it turn and change from the afternoon into the evening as I documented the nature of the street throughout. The main area depicted is a prominent part of downtown that experienced significant damage in the 2010 earthquake, and the buildings had since been repurposed and taken on new life primarily for car repair and metalworking at the time. Through layered original photography, it reflects the dynamic, ever-changing nature of urban life in Haiti's capital.
The Dream of Flight is a single-channel video loop of layered original footage of ocean waves and seagulls in flight. A single bird moving against the wind gives way to a gathering flock, which thins again to one lingering seagull, nearly overtaken by the wash of water layered over it before the loop restarts. Through this cycle of coming together and dispersal, and the transposition of sea and sky, the piece evokes persistence and the feeling of pushing against forces larger than oneself.