The air felt tender (2025)

I was remembering the experiences of two moments I’ve only ever felt in my life: meeting my friend’s first newborn child in the first few days of her life, and being present in the emotion people felt when they were called by the Holy Spirit to go up to the altar at the Pentecostal church I attended as a teenager. I witnessed people collapsing to their knees, crying, giving praise, speaking in tongues, singing, and dancing in circles - something I later came to understand to be a form of a Ring Shout: a Hoodoo spiritual practice rooted in African traditions developed in the New World. I felt that emotion every time I witnessed it.

This body of work investigates how materials function as visual tools while referencing their spiritual, political, and commercial histories, particularly the use of shells. The materials used have been sensitively hand-collected and sourced.

 

 

The air felt tender, 2025
Suede leather, shells
13 x 17 cm

 

Spirit’ gon catch you, 2025
Nylon, bamboo, string, shells
25 x 20 cm

 

Ring shout, 2025
Leather, shells
20 x 25 cm

 

The Teacher, 2025
Cellophane, bamboo, string, nylon
27 x 32 cm

 

Boundary line, 2025
Leather, shells
20 x 25 cm

 

Untitled, 2025
Nylon, bamboo, string, shells
25 x 20 cm

 

The shells are arranged to capture the rhythm of a ring shout. The blue leather represents the colour used by Gullah Geechee people of the Sea Islands in the southeastern United States, who paint the exteriors of their homes this colour to ward off evil spirits.

 

The body moves in such a way when stringing a bamboo kite, no matter the scale. With some of my sculptures, I leave the kite in its raw form, and use the play of light where the shadows play on the wall, capturing the presence of the body again, seeing where the rhythm and movement took place.

 

I have a growing interest in shells at the moment. Shells, particularly cowries, have been used in burial rituals as a way for the deceased to be accompanied safely into the afterlife. Found in the graves of African-Americans who lived in the American South and ancient Egyptian culture.

 

The shadow of the layered purple cellophane on the wall feels like a shelter of some kind.

I like the idea of this work being a conversation between different hands, and the accessibility to the materials around you. The student, the teacher. Made from a mix of traditional materials kites are made from, and nylon.