She is Here is the first of four works in my series In the Wake of Ruin. This piece weaves together elements of live performance, sculpture, and painting to explore the inherited dialogue of internalised ideas around race, globalisation, class, and gender—rooted in the colonial experience as it affects me as a descendant of the Black Diaspora.

The work spans timelines, drawing from both personal history and my artistic practice. For example, the posture of the down-facing woman references my live performance FACEFORWARD (2021) and is set against a surreal, crumbling cityscape first found in A Primal Scream (2020). This collapsing world symbolises the relationship between our internal and external structures—how societal systems shape our neural pathways and contort our true selves. The work questions: What happens when life-nurturing structures are absent? And how do we move towards a holistic, liberated reality?

Through this series, I am uncovering the chapters of my own awakening, a process I call rewilding. It’s about unlearning societal conditioning, letting go of external identity markers, and exploring the possibilities of what it means to be truly free. She is Here is a reckoning with that process—a reflection on what it takes to reclaim freedom when we don’t yet know what that liberation looks like.

Tangled/ loosen the knots and soften the glare.  A series of three (2023)

Acrylic and water colour on paper 59 x 84 cm 

Loosening (2020)

Acrylic on cardboard 100 x 120 cm

Comfortably Uncomfortable (2019) 

Acrylic on cardboard 80 x 80 cm

Digital work (2019 - 2023)

Procreate

Imagination and the Misfit Kid (2019)

Mixed media on paper 59 x 84 cm 

Sky paintings (2017 - 2019)

Acrylic on dustsheet 100 x 100 cm, 80 x120 cm and 130 x 170 cm