In The Belly Of The Cave

Informed by Saadiyah Hartman’s essay “In The Belly Of The World,” this sculpture looks to the practice of mothering and nursing as a black woman's sacred survival technology that originated during the middle passage. Nurse uniforms hanging in the air like meat racks emphasize the commodification of the role of caretaking and the lack of recognition that Black medical providers are shown in the field. Weaving as an indigenous technologies passed down through matrilineal symbolizing the threading of individual destinies as told in the myth of the Moirai or the Greek Fates is referenced through the crafting of two cast iron tools - ironclad sewing needles in the shape of female figures  and a bovine jawbone used as a spindle.