((@)), or when we die, our portraits speak to our living descendants
This ongoing series’ title is a sketch of a spiral around a singular point, best written as ((@)), or when we die, our portraits speak to our living descendants. Inspired by Amiri Baraka’s discussion of the changing same, it’s a performance, or maybe a ritual practice to bridge and upend time as a means to connect with my current and future ancestors by testing limits of reading and engaging with artifacts. The title alludes to how life is circling around the same ideas and notions our lineages hold, but at a deeper understanding or higher consciousness. What are those intangible feelings that people and places hold, that are felt even if the person is no longer present?


I suppose I’ve been making images to embody the shift in my perception of time. Time is both a construct and perception of how we move through space. For me, time seems non-linear, maybe existing as a spiraled spectrum that orbits the “who” and the “where” within which I find myself. That “who” and “where” hold a generational history which courses through me, as it has the people before me, as it will the people after me. And it’s the implications of that compounded time that guides me to a higher consciousness or a deeper understanding of my present. More importantly, to quote artist David B. Jang, time is emotional. So if my perception is guided by emotion, then it is both relative and individualized–and it is also far less rigid or exacting than how we currently measure time.

Furthermore, memory and nostalgia are the union of personal histories and emotion. And this work aims to harness my emotions and bodily memories as a way to compress and expand time into something more imperfect and true.

Some of the works included are prints from negatives belonging to either me or my father over a forty-year span and bridging the gap by way of  physical, maybe instinctual, interventions.

Other works contemplate moments as something bigger than an instant because memories are not a singular fraction of a second. By extending images beyond seconds I can observe what it is that we’re carrying and leaving behind, or in short, I can witness time travel.