*caption continued in comments* There’s nothing that connects me to my past beyond imagination, memories that do their best at survival and the truths that live on through my flesh. I recently had a discussion about the presence of blackness in contemporary culture, which focused around this notion of truth, as everything ultimately does. Firstly, the question of: does imagery even allow for anything even remotely close to truth in a society where media presence is pervasive and mentally infectious? And secondly, the question that asks us to consider what in “truth” is ours, what is us, and how can this be brought to a contemporary discussion without the shadows and incongruence of a past that while it may be part of us, it is not us as we stand here, in this landscape as it exists today. Where is that overlap? How do we allow ourselves to continuously return to the present without a constant toe tipping back towards a past that we might not even understand? And does that matter? This image is not one of belonging, or rootedness, but perhaps that angst that is present in its lack, and even more so, the confusion that is so palpable, so truthful, and the most present, when considering these aspects of being, expressing, and allowing onesself to be seen. The questions I am always asking myself are: who is I? And by what means do I define this self? How many times does this “definition” arise by an act of forceful placement by way of reflection, recollection, and even imagination? As much as I am a part of a perceived past, I am just as much only the product of what my particles exist as in this present moment. Are my glimpses into the past a desire for a false narrative by which to hold on to? or is imagination just as much a viable space within which to allow a “self” to emerge? I realise also, how blackness, or womanness matters both little and much. Little, in the larger, grander scheme of humanness, but much in the smaller schemas of society. Here, it matters, but how it matters and the fact that it does matter becomes it’s own lens with which we can make and look at work that exists and is being made at this point in time.