Pulled Out at the Root
Pulled up at the Root borrows the visual language of lynching to show how Black Femme’s are expected to die out of frame. This work encourages discussion about the psychological and physical fight against misogynoir black femmes are constantly in both outside of and within their own communities.
The skin of the dolls are made up of floral weeds found in the American south east. The dolls are dressed in unique white dresses calling to mind wedding, baptism, and funeral gowns. Each doll is hung up by their hair, the most politically argued part of the black femme. This work is in direct conversation with American Weeds Growing through Docile Garden which drawing parallels between the defining of wild and domestic American weed plants and to the attempted erasure and control of black femme bodies and identity.
The history of Black Southern femmes navigating our place in American Society has a lot in common with the narrative of the American weed. Brought over from far away countries to task and multiply. But once thriving past what was expected, the plants were labeled weeds and black femmes were deemed undesirable and segregated from growing in the presence of those flowers found acceptable to be in the garden. Resilience twisted against them and used to justify their dismissal. Living in the intersection of having others desire your physical, mental, and emotional labor but not finding you of value. The control, containment, and killing of them became normal; and was even encouraged. Being defined for what they can or can not provide to others and anything outside of those external constraints being erased, ignored, or deemed a problem.
