Tougaloo (Soundings) 
 

(Working text) Tougaloo is a response to the ways in which geography holds memoryies that shape our imagination.  From layers of sensory conditions indelibly tied to liberation infrastructure to the smallest details of love, friendship and learning.  This work is a meditation on the spatial logics of historically black institutions and the black feminist curricula that shape their grounds.  In relation, I’m interested in the ways we expand and hold systems of built environments that make way for reinforcements of these spatial logics and thinking infrastructures.   There is reinforcement work to be done: reinforcement toward improvisation, reinforcement toward abstraction, reinforcement of language, and reinforcement toward sound and reinforcement of place where radical improvisation is inspired. What does it mean to do this memory and reinforcement work without the promise of stability now/here?  Tougaloo is a Choctaw word meaning "where two rivers meet”. From this, I’m inspired to express the beauty of amalgamation and the transhistorical work of state-change toward institution that hold us, grow us, challenge us and bring us closer to ecosystems of ancestorship.   

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(Working text) 

These paintings are  meant to exist in a liminal space between drawing, sculpture, and sonic architecture. A wood-based structure soaked in deep monochromatic blue hues, layers with a series of mark-making and schematic drawing. Embedded in the wood sections is an immersive multi-channel soundscape creating a sonic space in relations to planes, volumes and surfaces.  Visitors may enter and experience recorded sounds moving across and between the shapes, including layered conversations from black archives, nature field recordings, and electronic sounds. Upon touching the surfaces a physical vibration connects our bodies to what I call the soundings.

I’ve been spending time in the Tougaloo College Archive researching the Zenobia Coleman Library, designed by Latvian American architect Gunnar Birkerts.  In his brutalist style, Birkerts also designed two dormitories and developed a master plan for the 500-acre campus grounds. In relation, I took a closer look at the building design for what we called “the mansion.” The antebellum mansion or “big house” was built by architect and builder Jacob Lamour and was where slaver John Williams Boddie lived.  I'm re entering my history.    

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