A Poet Trying to Be an Artist
I recently started drawing. It is visually bad art, but it holds meaning to me and I thought it appropriate to share it.
Title: I Am Whole
I recently started affirming myself by saying ‘I am whole.’ That is, even if I dislike my body or somethings about myself, I’ll get by because I am whole. Even if the world stands against me, I am whole. But this wholeness cannot be individualised, if I am to be whole, as a Black queer woman, I need my world, and the whole world to be whole too. A call for my own wholeness is a call for freedom. That’s why here my Afro is replaced with the Earth- to be whole is to learn to fight for freedom.
Title: My Body Is For The Collective: The Community Remains Grateful
I am both the world’s and my own communities property. Everyone wants a piece. The Black female body, to the world becomes a sight for both admiration and hatred. To the community, it is a sign of betterment. Everyone except me knows what’s best for me. Everyone except me gets to clothe me, feed me and teach me. Everyone except me gets to know my body. The arms and fingers are shaped weirdly because whilst everyone can perceive me, I cannot perceive them. All I can do is wait for them to take their rightful piece of me. Thus, my body is for the collective and the community remains grateful.
Title: Even When I Feel Nothing I Feel It Completely
This is inspired by Sylvia Plath, who said: ‘I don't know what it is like to not have deep emotions. Even when I feel nothing, I feel it completely.’ I think about this quote often. The spiral in the middle is the merging of all my thoughts, feelings and emotions. I feel all uncomfortable emotions such as sadness and anger in my chest. Even when I do not want to feel, my body will feel it for me.
Title: What Does Revolution Taste Like?
This drawing portrays my thoughts and feelings and how intense it feels to think about these things.
Title: And What If The Grief Is Eternal?
Person A and I are bodies. Around us chaos ensues and indeed we burn in it too. Seperately. The linking of the bodies seperated by the heart represents the unity we used to have- now severe. The background, chaotic and messy. The chaos is the genocide and colonialism that consumes everything in sight.
Title: Spiralling
The spirals represent my literal spiralling when I try to navigate returning back home from a year abroad that has changed and radicalised me.
Title: Woman
Woman is never allowed to just be. Within, the green, self love fights red, self hate. In the end, she is equal parts love and hate. Out with, the constrasting stripes showcase that her destiny is being decided in opposite directions. She must equally be seen and dissapear, and in all, she must remain perfect and content. Woman is thus never allowed to just be.
Naked because her body is for the collective, faceless because she is nameless. She is Woman. She is ‘female’, but never human. Never subject, always object. Never in her prime of existing, always in a state of submission or resistance. In this way, to be human, is to always over-be.
PS - you are an artist. As long as you’re expressing yourself in any way - you’re making art!
love this!!!!!