Our Duty to Fight, Gallery 400 (University of Illinois at Chicago). 2016
I’M ON MY WAY unifies imagery and audio to cross-examine the processes by which loss and remaining fragments take place, while also interrogating the repetitiveness of black state violence and its disruption of black families.
This video piece was done in collaboration with Toya Jones, the eldest daughter of Bettie Jones, who was shot and killed by the Chicago Police Department in the winter of 2015.
I’M ON MY WAY addresses notions of remembrance, familial remains and the vision of black futures post-death. Repetitive and over lapping segments of Mahalia Jackson’s “I’m on my way to canaan land” references the melancholy and repetitiveness of black struggle and survival while simultaneously signifying the hope and vision of black liberation in both their given complexities. In its acknowledgment of black state violence, continuation of black life AND black death, I’M ON MY WAY is a statement of hope, repetitive efforts, remembrance, and black futures.