MVMTLS (2023)

An excavation of a Black collective memory with South Dallas starring as supporting character. The film's sonic landscape is shaped around interviews that took place in the quarantine lockdown of 2020, tracing the memories of various Dallas residents on the subject of their childhoods. Its use of collected archival footage, present-day photography, home videos and aged photographs creates a tapestry that travels from moment-to-moment in stark contrast to the environment in which these conversations took place. It is a candid peak at the power of collective memory--one that tracks the movement of these Lone Stars and yields a fragile truth, a sacredness of this community.

Raw Tourmaline (2021)

Raw Tourmaline is a developing multi-media installation that takes one through the loops and scattered nodes of the minds of five black souls in Dallas, Texas via image, sound and the in-between.

It explores the connection between memory tied to objects from childhood. Similar to the raw formation of tourmaline stone, the collection of these memories takes the shape of faded fragments, blurred lines, some more polished than others. To echo their wandering thoughts, each journey is documented in a stylized format as recreation of the experience in effort to add color and sense of time to the gaps and seamless strands within memory. 

Bringing various items, tokens, keepsakes from their childhood homes, the subjects engaged in interviews, then primed conversation. These events took place over the summer of 2020, when the victimization of black lives at the hands of a broken system could not be ignored. Through archival work, sound recordings, and narrative portraiture (taken at The TX Studio) Raw Tourmaline illuminates a deep focus on the fulfilling in spite of circumstance and objects deeply connected to identity shaping experiences. Whether the objects were regarded as trivial or protected for sentimental value, the memories that sprouted from them had visible roots. Raw Tourmaline is the gift of proclamations, self-worth in a vulnerable climate, and blackness in raw form.

Fresh From the Studio | W&TW Artist Talk