Eating the Other, 2025 Dyed burlap, wood, chicken wire, mylar, ceramic 26 in x 26 in x 27 1/2 in
By framing the Yoruba figure within a structure that both confines and stages it for view, this work invokes the historical legacy of “human zoos” in the United States—spectacularized displays of Black bodies for white consumption—and the colonial construction of Black sexuality as simultaneously hypervisible and forbidden. The obscuration of the figure from multiple vantage points speaks to the mechanisms of control and erasure historically enacted on Black subjectivity. The reflective surface complicates the act of viewing: one cannot observe the figure without simultaneously confronting their own image, thus implicating the viewer within the gaze.
