I SEE YOU TRYING TO PUT ME IN A BOX

This piece mixes in my love for bold, high-textured abstract painting and my love for the woman-holding-binoculars motif to explore conversations around gaze.

“We are so visible we have become invisible,” writes Daphne Palasi Andreades in her book Brown Girls. To be made to feel invisible or too visible is an interesting phenomenon. It creates an urge to figure out what you really are, if there is a ‘you’ that exists beyond the perception, and it forces an empathy which may not always benefit one’s own self in the quantities that are conjured up, because you must always consider the perspective of those who “see”, or don’t “see” you. You become an observer, but also perhaps a performer.

Who is looking at whom or isn’t able to see? With what clarity? With what intent or perspective? With what stereotype in mind? How do women of colour, like me, deal with other people’s gaze and desire to put us in boxes of their construction? How do we resist the gaze of others, as Toni Morrison always tried to do?

36 (h) x 36 (w) inches, acrylic and hand drawn work on a wood frame backed canvas. For purchase or interest in exhibiting, please see information here and here and get in touch.