Gwo Fanm

At the center of my work is the quest for understanding family trauma, inheritance, and transformation. I seek out pathways in my artistic practice for unlearning, storytelling, and transference of power and trauma within family. These practices allow me to expand my family’s narrative beyond single perspectives, from gatekeepers of information within my family to xenophobic narratives of Haitian people. How does photographing my friends as they interact and perform in the nude help to develop a trusting and healing relationship with the body? How is that experience transformative in giving me agency and power? This process allows me to perform a safety net that I would like to experience more often in intimate dynamics. I consider healing as a personal, social, and spiritual process in the face of the negativity attributed to the African Diaspora, and in my case, in my familial land of Haiti.