How does one navigate the hyper-visibility of the world yet be completely invisible at the same time?
You Must be a Special Lady, and a Very Exciting Girl is an exhibition searching for a quiet place to understand meaning and unease behind “exposure”and the violence of the gaze and the needed desire to be left alone to experience/process sexuality, femininity, and ancestral trauma. The narrative is told through sourced photos, video, journal entries, velvet curtains, and the color dusty rose. The materials used; candle wax, privacy glass, and tarnished beauty supply jewelry discuss this gilded form of femininity that has been placed onto Black women for society to easily digest their existence. A friend of mine once told me it was a lonely existence to be a Black woman in this world, and I knew she was right. This exhibition is not about legibility but
more of an intuitive practice of gazing, staring, and perceiving. Throughout the exhibition there are books, you can pick them up and read them.
Ownership
Aloofness vs. Isolation vs. Concealment vs. Privacy