From 2015 - 2018 I was really obsessed with outer space. Everytime I had an opportunity to create something, I would paint these true blue, deep purple, magenta scenes of possibilities. I had just learned how to use spray paint (shoutout Scape Martinez and Ala Ebtekar), and I found myself creating these layered universe scenes featuring a dance of planets, swirls, splatters and dots again and again. Sometimes I’d tag “more space” on these pieces.

In hindsight, I look at that version of me and know that “space” was sacred to me. I grew up feeling like there was never enough room for all of me to exist. Part of this had to do with the trauma I experienced in my home and the ways I learned to be the stable, consistent, controlled thing in a chaotic environment. Part of this came from me being a gender fluid, multi - racial, weirdo, creative kid in a world that so desperately wanted to make me comprehensible and neat. I always felt safest outside. Often, I felt like I could only achieve the sense of peace I desired in death. Me reaching for outer space was me reaching for a world beyond.

This was also the beginning of me being called by my Afro-futurism guides: scholars, artists, scientists, philosophers, liberation workers, architects and healers.

Those who reclaimed the imagined objectivity and non-personhood of Black people by white colonial systems as an indicator of our truths living somewhere else - of us being somethin else.

In being ripped from land, language, culture and being in a perpetual state of violence; we are presented with the cure and curse of remixing and remembering our past and embodying a future that gives us dignity, divinity and belonging now.

Thank you for visiting the inner space is the place portal. Find other portals to unlock more adventures.