Alexa

My fiery angel! Happy Birthday to the love of my life ❤️‍🔥 so imaginative and hardworking and kind. It’s an honor grow older together. To learn, heal, laugh, take apart and put together with you is the sweetest life!

Last week a dream of mine came true! I got to visit some of the chinampas of Mexico City—predating Spanish colonization and still feeding many today. It was so beautiful and special to learn how the surrounding volcanoes and generations of families in Xochimilco have worked to create the layers of rich soil and preserve the floating farms. We met farmers who grow the tons of food that feed Mexico City and parts of North America. We walked through fig trees and rows of pansies and discussed the economic and ecological policies that dictate who grows food for who and at what value. One thing someone said that stuck with me is “land is for those who work it”. I’ll never forget the sulfur smell of the wet soil and how much it reminded me of growing up in Blackwater ❤️ and getting to taste young pulque (1 day old!) my first pulque! Thank you to Jorge of @pachoamexico for sharing the farms’ histories, sharing your food spots, and your book recs.

It’s my world! It’s your world! It’s our world!

Every birthday is a blessing and a reminder of all of the love and abundance in my life ❤️🦪🪽 All things considered, I still feel like one of the luckiest girls ever

Sitting in the sun drinking with the most gorgeous Dolls! Swimming undisturbed topless at sunset! All the chicken fingers and blunts I could hold!!! Yesterday was a dream come true. Wish I could show baby Alexa all the gorgeous queer freedom in her future ❤️‍🔥🦐

Brilliance and Beauty everywhere I look and everywhere I go!

Got to bust it wide open on a Jumbotron for @theestallion under a full moon. That’s her beautiful voice in the video saying “okaaaaay”.

Recently I had a chance to speak with LinYee Yuan of @thisismold magazine on behalf of @recessart as a part of their Food and Abolition series which considers how the political, social and economic project of prison abolition, ending the prison industrial complex (PIC) and setting in place reparative networks of care, can inform our movement for redesigning sovereign food systems. LinYee was interested in what might it mean for an art gallery to be a site for community care. I found a lot of real time realization in this conversation with my colleagues and LinYee and I’m hopeful both for what is to come at Recess and in my own continued Abolition education. Full interview 🔗 in the @thisismold profile! Artwork by Joey Han

Endlessly grateful for and inspired by Faith Ringgold’s brilliance. May her soul rest at peace and the power of her imagery live long 🖤❤️💚

“Expanding upon Lavendra (2015-)—a fictional proposition envisioning a brown dwarf’s quest for planetary realization fueled by a reverence for the artistic legacy of Black American R&B divas—my upcoming Session delineates itself into two distinct realms: a secluded space for personal ideation and creation, and a communal viewing space. [...] Frustrated with the hypervisibility and surveillance of the black femme body, my recent installations and performances have questioned how and when the Black femme body is displayed, sometimes intentionally distorting and hiding the body, and asking the viewer to work to see it.” Within this setting, MHYSA, Jane’s performative persona, reckons with the residue of the 90’s R&B diva, reinterpreting these works and embodying these figures as a gesture of posterity and personal fortification. In addition to screenings and onsite activations, Jane will also invite a cohort of artists to meet to create and review a co-authored syllabus focusing on various formal elements of existing film and video works. Emphasizing process and methodology as they facilitate cinematic content, the notes Jane takes during these meetings will be released to the public in a newsletter available on Recess’ website. Visit the @recessart bio for the full list of upcoming programs. Please direct press inquiries to [email protected] Lavendra (Recovery) March 7 - April 19, 2024 Recess | 46 Washington Ave. Brooklyn, NY Image: E. Jane, co-directing a music video I + II, 2020, selfie diptych in still life installation, including two lightbox prints, fabric, etched glass vase, dried flowers, pearls, gemstones, bows, and wood.

“So young for death, we walk in shoes too big But you play it like a poet like you always did And I lay face upturned on the palm of God Pushed on by the fingertips of dreams They haunted me, consoling me And I would like to call, call it beauty Strained as love's become, it still amazes me And I would like to call it beauty” Thank you to everyone who called, texted, and showed up to usher me into 30. So much love. And anthurium! Pearls, lace, seafood, dancing, and the never ending task of holding joy with grief ❤️my loved ones are everything. I couldn’t ask for anything else. Thank you God for all you’ve brought me through and all that is to come.