The Wind Still Whispers
My practice centers on excavating silenced histories and giving form to the dreams interrupted by racial violence. Through an intimate exploration of my family's archives, I trace the patterns of displacement and loss that extend far beyond personal narrative to encompass collective trauma. The story of my great-grandfather—a Mississippi native who sought refuge in East Saint Louis only to flee the 1917 racial massacre that claimed approximately 250 lives and displaced over 6,000 Black residents—serves as both origin point and compass for this work. His interrupted journey becomes a lens through which I examine the broader landscape of dreams deferred and lives severed by systemic violence.
Wind Still Whispers, a site-responsive installation at STNDRD in Granite City, Illinois, positions itself deliberately within the geographic memory of historic East St. Louis. The work's central element—a wind chime assembled from weathered fence materials—transforms detritus into memorial. As these fragments move with the wind, they embody the physical and psychic displacement that defines the Black American experience. The chime's bells articulate what speech cannot: the presence of absence, the sound of silenced voices. Gold bricks tethered within the structure anchor these floating elements, representing both the weight of loss and the persistent desire to rebuild, to root, to remain.
The resulting soundscape functions as both lament and testimony, creating an acoustic space where visitors encounter the reverberations of historical violence within contemporary silence. This is not merely installation but ritual space—a place designed to hold complexity, to allow for the coexistence of mourning and hope, memory and possibility.
Through this work, I seek to honor the sacred weight of memorial while insisting on the continued relevance of these histories. The wind that moves through the chime carries forward the voices of those who were denied the chance to speak their futures into being, while simultaneously calling attention to the ongoing structures that perpetuate displacement and marginalization. In this convergence of past and present, the work becomes a site of both witness and warning—a space where the act of remembering becomes an act of resistance.
Photos: Courtesy STNDRD Exhibitions
