‘this performance is slowly killing me’ - 2022. born out of what was originally late night boredom & playing around with my home scanner, these images explore my relationship with Eurocentrism and what it means to be a dark skinned woman in the West. the lack of visibility in these images accompanied by the fact that my skin tone is too dark to show up is really representative of what life, being desired, and beauty means to me. The darker you are, the more invisible you become & the less noticeable you are. theres also a collective sense of being trapped which somehow always finds its way to the forefront when I explore my feelings around the topic of desirability. I feel like an animal in a zoo or circus in a cage, waiting to be seen by onlookers and ready to perform, pressing my face up onto the glass, begging, will you notice me? I feel this a lot of the time, the desire to be seen and noticed, to be chosen, to be viewed as beautiful and going to extravagant lengths to do so. this leads onto the smile. something I spent a while thinking how I wanted to convey as it was a necessity. Is the smile real or fake? Genuine or forced? Something I’ve had to reconcile with: my desire to look friendly and approachable. It all feels like a performance. Eurocentrism a performance which is slowly killing me.