Dust II Onyx Tarot is a deck created to bring guidance to those in search of their true inner selves. I’ve been guided through this project to encourage progress and social resistance for the lives that are lost in this world at the moment. The project also aims to foster deep spiritual transformation and revive the gifts imparted to us, and to be one of many gates to higher understanding and knowledge for those who desire to experience it. The shift that this world is experiencing is as much spiritual as it is material and takes the courage to own your destiny and purpose above all else. I’m honored to be even a small part of the healing that is taking place for so many people around the world. As we turn inward and face who we really are, we can improve the conditions of this world.

As a person who lives at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, art has helped me contextualize how I navigate this world. Mixed-media collage and sculpture have become the way that I can tangibly arrange these different aspects of my existence into a whole. As my practice has expanded, I’ve arrived at a place where I desire to explore those intersections communally.

The themes of my previous work dealt mostly with myself, understanding my body, the clichés surrounding it, and the violence inflicted upon it. I looked to art history to explore how being a fat black woman and being inserted into common narratives brought new context to them. My current series, Dust II Onyx, uses tarot divination to merge the multitude of intersections within black culture. I was inspired by my own spiritual journey deconstructing, decolonizing, and disconnecting from my Christian heteropatriarchal foundations.

As an African-American unable to trace my ancestry beyond a few generations, this work has helped me gather the shards of my identity that once felt scattered. I felt conflicted about jumping into other African spiritual traditions within the diaspora to find myself. I wanted to be conscious of my desire to appropriate traditions without forethought to how they connected to my own cosmology – considering the thousands of ethnic groups that exist within this expansive continent that is my soul’s
original home.

Using multi-media collage, I explored the archetypes within tarot while imagining an ancient civilization that carries all of our history within it. A world beyond this dimension, yet intrinsically connected to our own. A nonbinary world where I could see myself and those I love as powerful and eternal beings. I believe, in this way, my art can be a tool of resistance and transformation not just politically, but also at the root of one’s spirit.