In Focus

The current In Focus installation features Milkweed Blessings by Danielle Scott and The Queen by Desirae Brown.

Milkweed Blessings

In the words of the artist, “The milkweed being presented to the female figure is a symbolism of broken links between humanity. The young enslaved male figure is giving her a reminder of her dignity and the ability to fight for freedom. The milkweed is a symbol of Growth, Connection and Dignity. Milkweed has the ability to sprout in barren conditions, in the same way that the human spirit is able to survive and dream life beyond being enslaved. The Milkweed plant is a ‘heartache cure’ – these seeds bursting forth hold all the hopes and dreams lying dormant within each of us– allowing us to carry on forever.”

The Queen

Brown said, “When entering an unfamiliar space, we read the room. We take that information, gathered through our intuition, and act accordingly. I “read a room” as a woman of color and a single mother who has experience with living on low income, but how I read the room is also influenced by how the others in the room are reading me. In fact, many signs in our culture associated with lower income mothers of color are overdetermined into symbols with negative connotations. A single mother becomes a cliché, a woman of color who is a single mother a variation only, a type and not a person. In response to such negative and dehumanizing readings, I use materials that have come to symbolize lesser value or diminished beauty and transform them into a marker for something more personal and positive. I turn these signs back into something to be valued, by both the bearer and the perceiver, unveiling the beauty of single Black motherhood and revealing our strength, adaptiveness, and resilience.”