Recent Work
Three-Fifths
Billy Dee, Three-Fifths, Installation view @ Greensboro Project Space, 2021. Cotton fabric, Thread, Synthetic Quilt Batting. 6 x 6 ft.
This piece was created in collaboration with my mother, Margaret Nagi. During a 2-week quilt-residency in my studio at UNCG in January 2021, my mother helped me understand the importance of paying attention to the way the fabric wants to move, and surpassed me with her extraordinary work ethic. I designed the quilt, she taught me how to put it together.
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This piece was inspired by a passage from the book
Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor (p.65)
“Perhaps you could remove something more indicative of humanity instead of body parts. Could you take away a sense of smell and long-term memory? Maybe speech and the ability to draw? The formula requires not only the ability to see a person as a non-person (or rather to not see people at all, but as a population) but to un-see. Economic and politically strategic contortions aside, it suggests a creepy historical disappearing of people and a willingness to physically evaporate the body that cleans your floor, cooks your food, works your fields, and bares your children. Like Ellison’s invisible man, the three fifths man walks here among us, yet not all here, not all whole.”
Billy Dee, Abolition Is A Horizon, 2021. Cotton fabric, 12 x 6 ft.
Installation view, 2020-2021 UNCG MFA Thesis Exhibition, on view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina Greensboro, April 17 – May 22, 2021. Photo by Martin W. Kane, University Communications
c. 1970 Loretta Pettway, Denim, 84 x 66 inches, Collection of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
Image Source: https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/loretta-pettway/work/log-cabin%E2%80%94courthouse-steps-local-name-bricklayer-single-block-variation
As an artist and activist who believes in the necessity of P.I.C. (Prison Industrial Complex) Abolition, my sense of possibility, particularly in regards to the possibility of profound transformative change to systems of oppression, is deeply informed by the work and writing of Abolitionist organizer and author Mariame Kaba (the title of the piece is a quotation by Kaba).
This piece was inspired by a quilt created by Loretta Pettway, a member of the Gee’s Bend quilters. My attention was drawn to the fact that this particular quilt pattern, often known as “Log Cabin” or by the local name “Bricklayer” is also described as “Courthouse Steps” in regards to this piece.
Very Special thanks to the quilting team:
Sarah Laponte, Taylor Allison, Leah Junquera, Neeraj Sebastian, and Ash Strazzinski