For my Performance Art History of New York City, 1970-1980 course, I conducted a half mile crawl from SAICs 280 building to Maclean, a take on the crawl pieces conducted by the late great artist Pope L.
I get heckled, recorded by others, take many breaks, and cheat a little to my final destination, but I get there. I talk with my camera person @aquillx.evan about the experience and Pope L throughout, and I thank Evan for embarking on such a strange journey with me.
By the performances end my knees were skinned, my hands were black from the filth of the streets, and my body shook with pain from the almost hour crawl.
Full, uncut crawl video link in bio (may be overwhelmed if multiple viewers at once I’ve learned! Try again later if you encounter a problem!)
@saicperformance
“Overgrown” is a video and installation work showcasing a performance, the remnants of the performance, and all the hair I have grown and shaved from my head since January 1st, 2026.
Choose yourself. Choose for yourself.
Full installation on display in SAIC’s Grad Show 2 Exhibition, May 8th-20th.
Special thanks to @thelupusvampire for aiding in recording and @aquillx.evan for editing the video.
If the body was never meant to be divided, then the question is simple: who benefits from pretending it is?
The truth is, the body already knows what it is. It breathes, desires, aches, creates. It does all of this without asking permission from a label.
When we stop performing masculinity or femininity, something deeper appears.. just a human being, fully alive.
And that might be the most radical thing of all:
a body that refuses to lie about what it is.
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The (forever) Muse: @hex_girlfriend_
The Visual Poet: @zacharyraber.work
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*The gloves were donated in kind by the Estate of @andreltalley , with the transfer coordinated through @nccualumni@nccueagle
What’s revealed can’t be ignored.
When we stop dividing things into masculine or feminine, the body doesn’t become unclear, it becomes honest. It was never just one thing to begin with.
Multiplicity isn’t confusion. It’s reality.
We’ve been taught to simplify ourselves to be understood, but the body doesn’t actually work that way. It can hold contradictions and still be whole.
Living in that truth isn’t about losing identity, it’s about not forcing it into a box.
And without those labels?
What’s left doesn’t need to behave.
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The (forever) Muse: @hex_girlfriend_
The Visual Poet: @zacharyraber.work
The Main Character- A take on Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills for my Encounters With The Past course midterm.
I chose to respond to Sherman’s series to investigate time, gender, and race. In our modern world, taking a photo of oneself isn’t extraordinary the way it was in the 70s and 80s. We’ve all got front cameras on our phones- and all these images were taken and edited on a phone. For black women, a pivot to a drastically different hairstyle or look isn’t groundbreaking, it’s apart of many of our everyday experiences, so the change from Sherman to me takes on new meaning. But while these elements lived at the forefront of my mind when deciding to riff on the series, an unexpected aspect emerged- the concept of death. Death referring to all the versions I have been and can never go back to. Death meaning all the versions of me I flow in and out of in a day-between settings and people; code switching and deciding what aspects of me come to the forefront and fade to the background. Die, born again, die again. And yet I am my own maker, holding control. The main character.
CALLING ALL WALKERS, CALLING ALL WALKERS 🗣️🗣️🗣️ Ladies, grab your heels and warm up that runway walk! A model casting call is coming and you need to be ready 👠👢👡 . Tag TWO (2) ladies in the Chicago area who you know has a fierce walk. Stay tuned, more details coming soon 😉
The dissolution of femininity and masculinity is not a gesture toward androgyny as performance. It is a return to honesty. The body precedes language; it precedes classification. It contains multitudes long before culture attempts to divide them. This is less a symbol of gender and more a vessel of revelation. I am exposing the inherent plurality of the human multiplicity.
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The (forever) Muse: @hex_girlfriend_
The Visual Poet: @zacharyraber.work
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*The gloves were donated in kind by the Estate of @andreltalley , with the transfer coordinated through @nccueagle .
Vanessa Damilola Macaulay’s where the compass breaks open moves between South London, South Africa, and the U.S. South, tracing a circulation of warmth, scent, and residue between places often imagined apart. This work explores how the textures of the everyday carry the weight of shared histories and how something passed from hand to hand can hold geography, intimacy, and loss. “South” emerges here not as a fixed direction but as a method of relation, a way of knowing shaped by repetition and exchange. In its quiet gestures, where the compass breaks open invites a re-mapping of kinship across distance.
Collaborators: Maya Odim, Nathége Casseus, Morgan Robinson Gay, Austin Miles
FRI DEC 12: 7:45 PM
Get your INVERSE festival pass - link in bio 🎟️
#south #movement #performanceart #inverse2025 #inverseperformanceartfestival
In Breaking Through the White Noise, I attempt to speak on my experiences as a black person over various speakers blaring white noise. Once urged to make myself small and quiet by a society that often request and forces this, I discuss the ways black people are silenced, suppressed, and my finding the confidence to take up the space I need-though with much strain, as my voice can only go so far over the blaring sounds.
This is iteration 2 of what I see as an ever evolving work, as I foresee the piece becoming larger, louder, and with more variation in my vocalization.
Iteration 3 included the addition of the act of silencing the speakers, giving way to the clear delivery of my voice.
