info
charms
or Heaven;
i know that i can’t go there now
maybe then i can bring it here
i, i, i
it’s never been i
it’s always been Meroe, Cora, Cleo, Pamela,
it’s always been Florence, Juanita, Juanita,
and then i
these women who already brought a more Free State here for me
these women who bequeathed to me knowledge of self, the gift of art and craft, and a spirit to teach
we can bring it here
together
step into, love each other towards
the Free State
Notes: I will never ever forget the time in high school where a white teacher told me in front of the class that spirituality and magic and fate and soulmates or that a place/state/feeling of there being something more beyond the physical world that we know was not real. In that moment I was so upset I was brought to tears. I even remember saying something to the effect of well if there isn’t a place like that or if there isn’t the presence of something ‘other’ then there’s no hope. Or something like that. I felt like I was being stifled and I didn’t know why. I didn’t have the language to rebuff his logical (really illogical arguments) and I felt like my world was closing in on me. Because I, like many Black people now and countless Black people before me, have to imagine these other worlds, these other mysticisms to stay sane. I can’t solely believe that this physical world, this world of oppression and genocide and harm for people who look like me, is all that there is. I have to stake my hope in a state, a physical place or a spiritual plane, where I am free, where I don’t have to change myself, where I am reunited with loved ones, where I can just be without any pretense.
This work isn’t about the harm caused by white teachers, though. A portal to the Free State was born of my desire to make pieces dedicated to the women who came before me. I wanted to make a piece for 3 women on my mother’s side, Cora (my great grandmother who was a domestic worker), Cleo (my grandmother who was a teacher), and Pamela (my mother who is a doctor and writer). I wanted to show the love that Black women pass on to their daughters, heavily inspired by Black Mother Black Daughter directed by Sylvia Hamilton. I wanted to show how that kind of love preserves, teaches, creates new possibilities and new worlds. Soon, the idea for three vases became one vase.
The name came to me soon after. That morning I had finalized my sketch and while I was taking notes in class it flowed right out of my pen. A portal to the Free State. I use the spiral motif in my work a lot and I had drawn all of these spirals over the vase and I was thinking about how that love, the love of Black mothers, allowed me to access everything I have today. Almost like that love creates a spiral-portal to access new futures (my future!). That love passed down the skill and desire to teach, that love bequeathed to me the freedom to be an artist, that love connects me still to their legacies and that love allows me to feel their support when I’m doing something right. Keep going, they say, keep going. So this portal isn't just an ode to their love, it's a testimony. Everything that they were, I am. Everything that I am, they are.
Imagining other worlds beyond the oppressive physical world that we occupy is revolutionary. I am of the belief that you have to live within the colonial system, but I also know in the core of my being that we have access to these alternative worlds. And that we should draw on this skill, of imagination, fabulation, of envisioning a Free State, in order to bring that freedom in our world. If I can access this other world or state, who’s to say I can’t unlearn what I’ve been taught and create a new world for my descendants like what has already been done for me. Black love is so transformative, it literally creates new worlds.
I finished this work with the plinth cover. I wanted to record the names and birth dates of women in my family, on both sides, going back to my great grandmothers. Florence, Juanita, Cora, Meroe, Cleo, Juanita, Pamela, and me. Instead of putting their names and birth dates, I made charms that I felt emboided them and attached those to the cover. The wording on the cover references Ashley’s Sack, a sack embroidered by Ruth Middleton, the granddaughter of Ashley. Rose, Ashley’s mother, gifted Ashley this sack when they were being separated during enslavement and Ruth embroidered it many many years later. The sack was a gift of love, care, preservation, and a guide book to survival that each Black mother gives to her daughter. You must read All that She Carried by Tiya Miles if you have not already.
A portal to the Free State is meant to remind us all that we have access to these Free States, that we can envision decolonial landscapes, without oppression, subjugation, or genocide. And if we can access them, we can envision them, and we can bring them into our physical, earthly existence, too.
Free Palestine. Free Congo. Free Sudan. We won’t be free until everyone is free.
To borrow from Bernadine Evaristo, this work is
For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren
& the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn
& our brethren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs
& our men & our mandem & the 2SLGBTQIA+ members
of the human family
Cora was a domestic Meroe ran a store Cleo was a teacher Pamela is a doctor and an author Evelyn is
Inspirations for this project
The music of Nala Sinephro was the soundtrack of this project, specifically Endlessness and Space 1.8
Forever, Ya Girl by KeiyaA
Elizabeth Catlett exhibit in the Chicago Art Institute
Tiya Miles All that She Carried: A Black family keepsake
Nathalie Batraville’s face jugs
Black Mother Black Daughter by Sylvia Hamilton
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
The Belly of the World: A Note on Black Women’s Labors by Saidiya Hartman
A very special thanks to…
My family
My mom
Everyone at Studio 3 Tables for your advice, kind words, and laughter <33333
Dr. Melissa Shaw