I started this blog back in 2013 with a simple intention: to create a space where I could document the world around me, share what I was looking at, and reflect on how it all intersected with the work I was creating—or even the work I had already made or might create in the future. What began as a kind of digital sketchbook has become a record of memory, art, and the shifting ways I understand myself in the world.
Love, Diaspora, and Listening
Recently, I watched Amanda Seales’ Surrounded. There was a moment that stopped me cold: she took a pause to speak directly to a young man of Angolan descent who was being critical of African American communities. She said something like—Black folks from across the diaspora need to listen with deep compassion to African Americans, because the lived experience is different.
That moment brought me to tears. As someone raised in the Afro-Caribbean American community, my own context was always shaped by both being Caribbean and being American. It wasn’t until my time at Howard University that I came to more deeply appreciate African American lived culture, beyond the history we had already loved and celebrated. Sometimes, from within the diaspora, we’ve critiqued African American culture—not out of rejection, but from a yearning for us as a collective to do better, to be more.
What if it was all love?
But Amanda’s words reminded me: our different experiences matter, and acknowledging them can actually strengthen us. What ties us together is love. Even when we critique, there’s a bond that holds us together – even as we struggle across our differences.
Malcolm X, Heritage, and Compassion
This reflection immediately brought me back to my piece Malcolm X in Turban. Malcolm himself was the child of a Caribbean mother and an African American father, both Garveyites, rooted in Marcus Garvey’s vision for global Black liberation. That history has always been filled with both power and contention—diasporic difference sparking both conflict and creativity.
What if love is all there ever was?
Nsenga knight
What strikes me most about Malcolm is that he led with love. His compassion for Black people was fierce. Sometimes that love looked like passion or even anger, but at its core, it was still love. And it’s that love—across borders, across differences—that I want to preserve and carry forward in my own work.
Art as a Practice of Love
As I was watching Surrounded, I was also in my studio, painting. I started a new series of works for my children—paintings that emanate from that feeling the love, heritage, and community that surrounded me. These early sketches feel like they are pointing me toward something I want to explore in my upcoming exhibition, again returning to Malcolm X and to community as a site of healing and power.
I asked myself – what it was all LOVE? What if love is all there ever was?
Naming Places, Naming Ourselves
Part of this practice of love is also about how we name ourselves and the worlds we come from. In fifth grade, my Afrocentric teacher Aunty Barbara taught me to draw the map of Africa from memory, to research my genealogy, and to question the idea of a “Middle East.” Middle of where? East of where? she would ask.
Later, in Cairo, my studio assistant Rawan introduced me to the term SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa). More recently, I’ve seen the term WANA (West Asia and North Africa). These shifts remind me that language itself can be an act of reclamation.
Exhibitions and Encounters
This month, I’ve been nourished by museum visits in Doha. I saw the exhibition of Wafa Al Hamad: Sites of Imagination, the first Mathaf exhibtion of a Qatari Female artist. While the show was groundbreaking and deeply rooted in local identity – it also was an exploration of color, form – and an introduction to a world of female arab artists. I thought the show was generous in detailing the trajectory and timeline of the artists’ life and career, while also placing her later work in conversation with arab modernism.
I also spent time in Ghosts, a film exhibition that was installed in a way that was inspiring, immersive and engaging.
Beyond the museum walls, my Doha Art Salon has been another site of exchange and inspiration. I’ve been thinking about its next show—what kind of programming, publications, and workshops could emerge from it. Each gathering in my Doha Sakon feels like both a rehearsal and a reminder: art flourishes in community.
Global South and Diaspora
In the spring, I attended a talk at Liwan about art of the Global South. It was powerful to realize that I, too, am of the Global South: descended from Africa, a daughter of the Caribbean, shaped by America, but also moving beyond it.
Living outside of America has sharpened this awareness, helping me see that American-ness itself can function as a subculture. From here, I see more clearly the diasporic practice of deep listening and deep learning—a reminder that our different perspectives can strengthen us, if we hold them in love.
Toward Love and Care Beyond Our Own
If there’s a thread that ties all of this together, it’s the call to expand beyond our own in terms of love and care. Whether through art, naming, or diasporic kinship, I keep returning to the idea that our lives are richest when we connect across boundaries.
And maybe that’s why I keep blogging after all these years. Not just to record what I see, but to remind myself—and anyone who reads along—that we are part of something larger: an unfolding archive of art, ancestry, struggle, and love.