Installations
IN SEARCH OF ADONIS_XXX
2024
In Search of Adonis_XXX is a multichannel video installation depicting imagery from Immanuel J.’s autoethnographic inquiry of Black gay male sexuality in the digital age. J. took on a hypermasculine queer digital persona on the social media platform X. The installation reconstructs visual and sonic motifs of the time spent in erotic chat rooms and on social media to ponder the relationship between Black Gay men’s sexual fantasies and power. J. thinks through the erotic performativity of racialized cis-masculinity in the digital world. During the epidemic of male loneliness, these queer erotic spaces and subversive sexual bonding rituals seem to provide reprieve to the throes of racial capitalism and the toll it takes on the Black body. By leaning into the cannibalistic consumption of Black flesh, these men dawn personas informed by the pain of state-sanctioned violence, knowing– to the outside gaze– it may lead to the reification of stereotypical tropes. In return, …Adonis_XXX tells the story of the pleasure found within Black (dis)empowerment.
She is Clothed with Strength and Dignity; She can Laugh at the Days to Come!
2022
Motherhood in the words of Aunt Brenda.
See, we look at our parents first as these godlike figures like they're going to figure it out, not realizing that they were children. They were people. They had dreams and aspirations and all that. And when you strip that away, the title of mother– parent– this woman…. Who is that person?
Well, they're a person. They bleed just like you. They had dreams and thoughts and all that, just like you.
You know, I challenge everybody, you know, take your mother or father off of that godlike pedestal because you'll find that they're a person just like you. With thoughts and dreams and all of that. That's why I know her better now. You know. And when you see that your dream is deferred or it's just not going to come to fruition, how… that must feel? How stripped you must feel? How disappointing and depressing that must be. You know…
But my mother went from being on social service to being a dietary aide up at Teresian House and learning how to read. People may think, you know, that's nothing, but that was everything to her, for her to be able to confess that to me– that she didn’t know how to read. Even though I've known about it for years.
Who am I without my mother? Who is my mother absent from me?
Artist Statement for She is Clothed; by Immanuel J.
