There is a distinct lack of representation of Black subjects within the Western artistic canon, and learning to draw under the prevailing notion that a ‘standard’ body is a white one created issues for me as a Black artist. When creating artwork, I found myself struggling to remember my own features: the shapes of lips, curves of noses, and shades of brown that I saw in myself and my family every day. But practice helped me take notice of these details and build a love for them — in particular with hands, and the way that the palm fades into the darker tone of the back of the hand.
In this piece, I contrasted the unique expressiveness of hands with their collective direction. Black history and modern social justice movements are an ongoing story of how people have made change through geography, culture, and legislation. I tried to capture that in this work — our stories are different, but our goal is the same.
