Journeywoman
People travel to get away.
I travel to get in.
Pabo, Uganda
June 2012 – August 2012
Teacher in Residence
Key Takeaways: I cannot eat my Ivy League degree. The Acholi people remind me that ancestral wisdom of planting, farming and land relation is the real flex. Afoyo matek!
Havana, Cuba
June 2017 – July 2017
Artistic Development & Cultural Research
Key Takeaways: Oppressing a people with an embargo doesn’t break their spirit. They become more proud, closer knitted in community, and stronger in, by, and through their ancestral spiritual practices. This is the resistance.
Accra, Ghana
December 2019 – Present
Akom Initiation, Art & Crafts Development
Key Takeaways: A people’s spiritual tradition, culture, and cosmology is directly correlated to the art. It cannot be separated. Therefore, art is a spiritual practice that comes from the people and rightfully belongs to the people.
Grand-Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire
August 2023
Arts & Crafts Exhibition & Trade Show
Key Takeaways: It is not a coincidence, two days before Côte d’Ivoire’s Independence Day, Niger broke out in riot, following Mali’s lead in displaying collective rebellion against the colonial grip of the French. It is not a coincidence I was in Côte d’Ivoire during this time. Art and resistance have always held hands, joined in camaraderie.
Zanzibar, Tanzania
September 2023, December 2024
Arts & Crafts and Cultural Research
Key Takeaways: A people’s rich culture can make a beautiful poetic ritual out of what would otherwise be considered a monotonous task. Teatime with a lover in Stone Town stretches seconds. A moment seeps into eternities.
Playa del Carmen, Mexico
September 2023, April 2024
Culture Trade & Crafts
Key Takeaways: Ancestral memory is in the blood. It survives the raping and pillaging. It prevails over the whitewashing and suppressing. It is compelled to survive by any means necessary. The indigenous spirit has called back to self through radical imagination, dreaming, and existence. There is a resilient beauty and art in the remembering.
Bolzano, Italy
August 2025
Print-Making & Publishing Research
Key Takeaways: Visiting a 4th generation family-owned printing company reminds me of the love and adoration I have for written word. It sparks an artistic curiosity in printmaking, like an ancestral nudge from my great-grandfather who bound books in Panama.
Parlatuvier, Tobago
January 2026, May 2026
Curatorial & Book Research
Key Takeaways: Some lands call with a request: a fruit offering by a tree, a retelling of ancestral lore to empower the hearts of the people, an elevation for a forgotten unrested dead loved one. Other lands call proposing favor. Parlatuvier is the latter. You hold space for me to rest, reimagine, and dream. Your waters restore creative canals, quenching droughts of witty words and fancy phrases. Thank you for helping me find my voice again.
