Artist Statement
Through the ‘veil’ of my own distorted magnitude I explore the spiritualism of hip hop and the embodied freedom encompassed in its interdynamic gestures of power, symbolism, triple metaphor, dance and song as metalanguage. Hip hop as an immersive microclimate hemorrhages psycho-pedagogy. Through my performative video sculpture I conceive of hip hop as a dynamic form of esotericism or neo-Jungian ‘cultural dreaming’ in which the authors, coauthors and fans of the genre use powerful symbols and sounds that engage body, mind and group soul.
    Grind 4 Da Shine, the heretofore culminating work of my video sculptural practice, is a 2nd chakra flow in which I pose female hip hop stars Ciara and Willow Smith as Contemporary Goddess archetypes. Enhancing the environment with 2nd chakra symbols – water, crystals, fish, sex, money – dance emerges as a healthy expression of ‘Svadhisthana’ (trans. to sweetness or ‘her home’ in Sanskrit) the sex chakra. Aping choreography taken from Ciara’s music video Ride, I call attention to the choreography’s near exact replication of the yogic asana known as Goddess, a hip opener deeply connected to creativity. In my derelict cosmogony of hip hop I also conflate the foundational ‘Downward Dog’ or ‘Adho Mukha Svasana’ with the popular vernacular dance form pioneered by Louisiana native Big Freedia sissy bounce. The soundtrack culls from artists such as Lil Wayne, Biggie and Snoop Dogg, overlaid with the sound of my ‘bling’ and several tracks of my own Ujjayi Pranayama, a style of yogic breathe mimicing the sound of the ocean waves; water being an elemental symbol of the sex chakra.     One of the defining lines in this video comes from Project Pat, an artist from Memphis, Tennessee Lil Wayne names as an important influence. The line ‘Crack a nigga head,’ illustrates three important elements in the work:  ‘Danger’ as a racial fetish invoked to disrupt bourgeois values and sell records. Speech and song as collective redemption and release from the pain of institutionalized violence against blacks. ‘Crack[ing]’ one’s ‘head’ as a metaphor of spiritual elevation into the extra-linguistic ether.
    Historically avant-garde practice has entailed an interculturalism of appropriation that always relies on white hegemony as its veritable backbone. As bell hooks notes, white consumers utilize black vernacular popular culture to disrupt bourgeois values. My work hinges on hooks’ explosive ‘moment’ as the abysmal residue of capitalist commodity fetishism, an illusive, psychosexual chimera. I illustrate neuroses as a contemporary form of Romanticism. Here I define Romanticism as a constellation of motivations, in particular a fixation with a remote, perfected ideal. This work is incantatory, ‘Embodied Feminism’ – the glittering alchemy that occurs at the moment when the subaltern speaks in the visual, when the symbol is transgressed and all the energy falsely invested in distance provides an explosive gateway into the infinite.