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This project is a recontextualization of a historical painting of the Christian iconography symbol of Charity with children. In the painting, I am taking Guido Reni’s original painting of a young maiden breast-feeding orphan children and turning it into the idea of the Mitochondrial Eve taking care of her racially diverse children. The Mitochondrial Eve is the common matrilineal ancestor of all humans and passed down mitochondrial DNA through every female descendent, making her the mother of all humanity in a way. By appropriating this image with black imagery like a full afro, Kente cloth patterns, and African color symbolism, I am re-contextualizing the original meaning and adding art and historical references to this scientific theory. Within the mother figure, the skin tone, hair texture and style, and clothing color were changed. The skin tone and hair texture were changed to reference the Mitochondrial Eve originating in Africa. At the same time, the hairstyle was designed to play off of both Christian iconography symbolism to represent a deity but also to reference the 1960s civil-rights movement where the afro gained popularity for its symbolic representation of black pride. But for the clothing, the colors were changed to purple and white to represent their African color symbolism of femininity, healing, and purity. For the children, their skin tone and some facial features were changed to represent ethnic groups like people of East Asian, European, and African descent. While, the background is decorated in Kenté cloth patterns that represent ideas having to do with power, queen mothers, royalty, excellence, strong family, and divine beauty. Overall the work speaks of the pride of the Black origins of the world and uplifts the black figure and mother.

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The trope of ‘The Tragic Mulatto’ begins with a mixed race person, ignorant to their blackness, living amongst their oppressors by slipping under the radar through conformity. However, through tragedy and change, they are forced to choose a path: live in their truths of multitudes or continue living with ignorance and self-hatred.

Through my exhibition ‘The Neo Tragic Mulatto: Forget Me Not’, I am breathing a new perspective into the narrative of The Tragic Mulatto. My multicultural upbringing and lived experience informs to work through how I visualize the intersection of the unconscious shadows built up from an individuals past traumas and the collective memory and experience that is tied with blackness.

By employing the use of distinct symbols like the Forget me not flower, wire fences, and the unfinished or distorted visuals allow me to reference metaphors that tether my work to reality and connect to my personal iconography. The use of the Forget me not flowers within the work my only reference its original meaning of remembrance and it's used as a symbol for Alzheimer’s, a type of dementia that distorts perception and memories making it hard to distinguish passed from present. But its purpose in my work is to evolve its meaning by using it to represent the past holding onto you and you intern holding onto the past. By doing so allows me to explore the fickleness of memory and the ways in which trauma and the passage of time can distort our perception of truth and reality.

‘The Neo Tragic Mulatto: Forget Me Not’ questions the reality of tropes and stereotypes in American culture and how they can shape and limit the perception of blackness. The work calls for viewers to embrace the complexities of the past and recognize how it shapes the present and future. The distortion of the past has allowed for the illusion of change to enter our collective consciousness morphing into a surreal narrative about who we are and where we come from.

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Why can’t you hear us?

Why can’t you see us?

Aren’t we your favorite form of entertainment?

Don’t you love to watch us on your screens?

Don’t you love to hear us in your music?

Then why can’t you hear us scream out for help?

Why do you turn a blind eye and tune us out?

Am I making you uncomfortable?

Am I acting too much like a thug for you?

Would you prefer if I stand there while you shoot and mace us?

Would you prefer if I smile and shake your hand while you beat and drag away men from their families to make them slaves to your system?

Or would you prefer if I stay in my place and be passive?

Your American Dream is a white picket fence

Our American Dream is getting out from behind the barbed wire fences that entrap our neighborhoods

But now the sun is setting on those old dreams

And in these dark times we will stand up together

We will break free of these chains

Rattle the cages

And crush your white picket fence

You will hear us

You will see us

You will know that Black Lives Do Matter

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