Artist Statement

My community-based practice is anchored in collective storytelling, poetry, sculpture, and performance and explores power dynamics and art critique. This past year, I've woven storytelling and communal critique into S.H.A.R.E. (Sharing Hardships Accords Resonant Experiences), a project whose title I borrowed from a speculative novel I am writing which now frames my artistic practice. The novel takes place in the year 2084, and follows a person living with HIV on an almost barren planet. My multidisciplinary projects are extracted from this novel to have transformative political dialogues with my audience.

Three key experiences shaped my current art practice: the 2024 Aids Archives and Arts Assemblies in Belgium, my participation in Write it Out! New York, and a pivotal performance/feedback moment at Kaaistudios (see portfolio). My practice has positioned me in spaces for QTBIPOC and disabled artists within a white, cis, and hetero system; a system which I constantly question.

The most powerful art emerges when the process itself is a form of belonging, especially when working with other QTBIPOC and PLWHIV.

A love poem to calico fabric (unbleached cotton):

Unfinished, unprocessed

husky, musky, yellow-tinged and light

your very existence captures the essence of armour

heavy, plain-woven, unbleached, and coarse

soft and jagged edges you achieve and endorse

historically woven by cāliyan hands

the undone remnants of garments reclaimed

a new purpose in processed pieces remains 

oh calico, as unfinished and unprocessed as you may exist

you are refined, versatile, adjustable and are bright

from flat-rolled to form-built and back

you are now, once again flattened, but with character and brack.

Emmanuel 2024