Book on my thesis project "Afotèz: Paper, Cotton, Stone."

8.5x11 in. 62 pages

a “thesis” project loosely similar to an MFA, but done outside of an academic environment, the idea being that you don’t have to be inside a schooling body to have your ideas validated and challenging what a thesis even is, and the rejection of the standards and confinement of white western academic art language, “Afotèz”, is a replacement word for thesis which combines the Yoruba and Haitian Creole words for thesis, Iwa afowoko and tèz. The contents and over all body of work explore the spectrum of the modality of black people, externally, internally and transcendentally through usage of the metaphoric usage of paper, stone, and cotton respectively.

Paper representing external perception of black folks, fickleness, instability and unreliability, stone being how black folks see each other, for better and worse in cases of both strength and rigidity, and cotton being how we’ve transcended, representing transformation, resilience, and tact.