Art Writing

The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing 

Jennifer Packer’s 2022 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing can be considered as a sort of retrospective, displaying over thirty works– drawings and paintings– from the past decade. Packer is 37 years old, so that in and of itself speaks volumes of her shocking level of success and prowess. Packer often depicts loved ones as well as flowers in her renderings, exploring themes of intimacy, representation, and pleasure. 

More than once, the titles in the show reference the Biblical, paralleling the sacred nature of her images. The exhibition title itself alludes to Ecclesiastes 1:8 – “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” The chapter speaks to the futility of life itself, for it has all been done before. In the context of Packer being a visual artist whose work is more interested in obscuring than depicting, the verse may reference the old idiom that ignorance is bliss.

Take, for instance, A Lesson in Longing (2019). It engages Packer’s tendency towards monochrome in order to really explore a color, preferencing a largely magenta palette with some variations of green – one that was inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting, Moses and the Egyptians (another Biblical reference)-- to depict two people in what appears to be a home-like environment with a cat, a soccer ball, and multiple plants. The oil is applied to the massive canvas in a manner that evokes watercolor or spray paint, unlike the classical use of oil paints. Washes of the vibrant red-pink are layered, dripping down the canvas to create an ethereal aura. Though the subjects are based on actual people Packer knows, the color choice and treatment of the paint conjure a surreality of sorts, bringing the viewer into what is more a reverie than a fever dream. These techniques allow Packer to limit access to the subjects, allowing some aspects of not only their image but their personal lives to remain private. This is a powerful statement considering that Western culture does not generally allow Black individuals – such as the ones commonly depicted in Packer’s portraits – that level of agency.

Another Biblical reference is in the title of another fairly large painting, Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!) (2020). The title is taken from the Beatitudes and is followed by a perhaps more well-known verse, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” A brown body is depicted reclined on a sofa. There appears to be a kitchen in the background, rendered sparingly so as to not give too much away. Flanking the lower level, Packer uses negative space to create the impression of a staircase leading to a window out of which a blue sky and a black bird flying free can be seen. Once again, a single color dominates the palette– in this case, it is shades of yellow. Most of the painting is a neon yellow that seems to create a sickly sort of dream state. Despite the presence of three different fans, the figure on the sofa wears only powder blue shorts and their body seems to be contorted in discomfort. The shape of it could reflect repose just as yellow could represent happiness – but here, neither does what it is expected to do. The head of the figure is tilted up in such a way that one might expect a guttural wail of utter exhaustion might soon fill the room. The viscerally textured fan and tell-tale drips coming from the plants, the couch, and the negative space of the stairs create the sense that this may be the hottest, relentlessly vivid, most deeply felt summer in ages. The house itself references images Packer had seen of Breonna Taylor’s home. Taylor– who the painting is named for and serves as a memorial of– was a 26-year-old Black woman who was murdered in cold blood in her bed by the Louisville police. Taylor’s killers were acquitted by a grand jury– an outrage that, coupled with the slaying of George Floyd, sparked a wave of civil dissent across not only the United States but the globe during the summer of 2020.

Blackness and the sacredness of Black lives – not Black exceptionalism– sits centerstage in Packer’s work. This is true even in her portraits of flowers. In Packer’s world, a painting bouquet of flowers is not a still life of flowers but a memorial of 28-year-old Sandra Bland who died in police custody after she was arrested three days prior for a minor traffic violation. Say Her Name (2017) holds the same enigmatic eeriness of a Francis Bacon painting, the same raw emotion of a Goya, and none of the distance from the subject that we see from the old Masters depictions of their sitters. The painting is especially bereft of the overexposure of brutalized Black bodies, Black death, and Black trauma that is much too common in mainstream media. In this way Packer’s desire to play with transparency and opacity through her primary medium of choice– oil on canvas– truly parallels her desire to control the level of intimacy the viewer is allowed to have with the subject. 

Transfiguration (He’s No Saint) (2017) invokes the spirit of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy whose mother chose to have an open casket funeral service for him after he was lynched on a trip to Mississippi in 1955. Till had been accused of flirting with, whistling at, or inappropriately touching a young white woman. His murder and the subsequent images from the funeral were hugely important to the civil rights movement, serving as proof positive of the abhorrence of lynching and the racism rampant not only in the South but the entire country. Perhaps it is the way the upper body was rendered fairly realistically with brown skin versus the lower body shown with gaunt yellow skin that almost makes the body seem bloated. The lower body in fact seems to drip vibrant red like blood spilling over navy blue bottoms from what looks like a stab wound in the side. The garish colors come together to echo the slain Christ figure who was stabbed in the side during his crucifixion. It is as graphic as the clash between the primary colors present. The decision to render the body as two separate parts of a whole evokes the imagery of a body in an open coffin – much like Emmet Till. Once again, the visual and literal language of the sacred is used to speak to the sanctity that is robbed of Black bodies in this political paradigm. It is worth noting that the year the painting was made was the year that Emmett Till’s accuser, Carolyn Bryant divulged that the incendiary claims that he had sexually harassed her in any way had been complete fabrications – she had lied, martyrizing him for decades to come.

Carolina (2011) depicts a Black body with breasts represented top nude – the figure wears dark wash pants and sits in a room that seems to converge in a bizarre manner, a door sliding into what looks like a toilet, all sliding out of frame. Another Black figure is represented reclining behind the subject foregrounded who is facing the viewer, but whose eyes are obscured by a blue baseball cap. There is nothing sexual about the foregrounded subject, which problematizes the representation of the female body in Western art, primarily painting. Packer has said that she would never depict a Black woman reclining in a manner that is reflective of her desire as a queer woman as that stance would belie her politics, and the air of this body is holistically non-sexual. Any interpretation  of sex would be a projection of the viewer.

Without holding viewers hands and without being too (though I wouldn’t say at all) didactic, Packer is able to powerfully communicate her internal landscape– be it emotional or philosophical– on the canvas. Her explorations of color allow viewers to spend more time making sense of what is and is not present in the frame. The masterful balance between what can and cannot be seen, what is and is not depicted speaks to the intimacy of knowing and not knowing. There is a vulnerability to all of Packer’s subjects – both depicted and ideological– that is protected by her choice to only uncover what needs to be uncovered. Personally, I don’t need to know more than what Packer has shown us. However, my eye is unsatisfied with what we have seen and certainly I would like to see more. 

West Coast Displacement at Hauser and Wirth

I walked about ten blocks from the L train at 8th Ave to Hauser and Wirth to see Jenny Holzer’s new show, Demented Words. I had not looked at my transit app, assuming that I knew the quickest, easiest way to get there – I did not. This hubris cost me as my excitement at the prospect of seeing Holzer’s work had waned by the time I arrived at the world-renowned, blue chip art gallery. 

I have seen sculptures and installations by Holzer at the Tate Modern prior to learning anything about her in Contemporary Art History, and as a fellow sucker for words, I very much liked her style. I knew that I’d have to take out special time to see her and Barbara Kruger’s New York shows this fall. This show, however, was extremely topical and the topic is one that I do not think is particularly interesting. I appreciate the simplicity of Holzer’s work as it is very easy to understand despite brilliant attention to medium and site specificity, but it becomes less powerful when the idea being communicated is equally as simplistic and lacking in depth or nuance. Espousing “liberal” or leftist ideologies is no longer a part of the counterculture nor is it provocative; it shows a failure to transcend the trap of binary opposition or provide a productive solution to the issue. The fact that a fine artist is making a scathing critique of former US President Donald Trump feels like preaching to the choir -– certainly not the statement that I think she thought it ought to be. Despite the visual splendor and thoughtful use of materials, it was hardly intellectually stimulating.

Disappointed, I decided to head upstairs. I had never been to this Hauser and Wirth location– only the 69th St location to see Hilma af Klint’s work– so I decided to see what else they had to offer. I was not captivated by the second floor installation of black and white photos regardless of their beautiful composition and more nuanced topicality. Despite my certainty that I would find more of the same on the top floor, and against my impulse, I decided to go ahead and check the show, In 24 Days tha Sun’ll Set at 7pm out.

I’m glad I did. As soon as the elevator doors pulled apart, I was shocked to see the vibrant washes of acrylic paint on raw canvas contrasting dark Earth tones such as navy, gray, and brown on a large, 86’ x 130’ canvas ahead of me. I was intrigued.

Walking past the gallery attendant sitting at the desk which had a copy of the artist, Christina Quarles’s book from a previous exhibition, I looked around the large white room with its concrete floor. If I’m very honest, I was too captivated by the paintings to pay much attention to the wall text, which I believe was positioned behind the attendant desk before the entrance to the gallery. This is a smart placement because it doesn’t serve to distract viewers from having an unobstructed view of the exhibit. With the painting inventory in hand, I entered the space.

Kicking n’ Screaming (2022, acrylic on canvas, 86” x 130”)

I had never heard of Quarles but much like the artist Jennifer Packer, she is a relatively young Black female artist receiving critical acclaim in the past few years. Packer– whose work is quite similar in technique and subject matter– recently had a solo exhibition on the top floor of New York’s Whitney Museum. It’s safe to say that Hauser and Wirth’s institutional power rivals that of the Whitney – at least when it comes to reputation. This show follows a run at the 2022 Venice Biennale  and precedes her showing work at the 16th Biennale de Lyon this fall.

“My project is informed by my daily experience with ambiguity and seeks to dismantle assumptions of our fixed subjectivity through images that challenge the viewer to contend with the disorganized body in a state of excess,” Quarles writes on her website. Being a queer-identifying, cis woman born to a Black father and white mother, Quarles’ grappling with identity and the different ways her presentation and positionality within the social world effect her place in it is put directly onto the canvas where the worlds she creates appear to fall apart to fall together.

Same Shit, Diff’rent Day (2022, acrylic on canvas, 70” x 130”)

Quarles is a Los Angeles-based artist (though originally born in Chicago) which is evident from the bright colors, translucent washes, and psychedelic icons she utilizes. Despite the fact that the eight paintings showcased in her first major solo exhibition in New York were painted in Somerset, England, they have a distinctly West Coast tone to them. The colors are vibrant like those used by artists like John McCracken and the varying layers of opacity created using acrylic paint evokes other West Coast Minimalists such as Larry Bell. Unbelievable textures are created by Quarles, who is able to create what looks like stencils or pieces of fabricated plastic cut-outs out of just acrylic paint. This, too, references West Coast Minimalist practices. 

Try n’ Pull tha Rains in on Me (2022, acrylic on canvas, 72” x 84”)

Through practical application Quarles also manages to create outstanding textural icons signifying things from water to wood to hair. Bodies figure largely into the work – no pun intended. These bodies seem to spill across the canvas – like the one seemingly falling out of a martini glass in Same Shit, Diff’rent Day (2022). Soft application of diaphanous hues of purples, pinks, and oranges that inspire sunset references create a suppleness to the symphony of limbs just as much as the lack of paint that creates contours from fragmentation and negative space. 

Caught Up (2022, acrylic on canvas, 84” x 72”)

By painting forms directly onto canvas without creating a background like in Try n’ Pull tha Rains in on Me (2022) or by creating matrices with the illusion of being three-dimensional floating in the void of the un-gessoed canvas like in A Song For You (2022), Quarles alludes to the relationship between the human body and the experience of space and time. This allusion is made again with the warping black-and-white checker pattern in Caught Up (2021) which both references Bauhaus as well as 1960s mod style. This time jump – which is still relevant and is coming back into style in this contemporary moment– brings us back to that reference of the corporeal experience of temporality. By creating ungrounded spaces that both collapse in on themselves and hold up languid and almost unintelligible bodies, there is a sense that these structures are created and enforced by the human mind as it processes through the nervous system. Dislocation edges close to being the subject of the paintings.

A Song for You (2022, acrylic on canvas, 77” x 86”)

This ephemerality is referenced by the gossamer density of technicolor feet in the painting the show is named for, In 24 Days Tha Sun’ll Set at 7pm (2022). Sometimes tendons are signified through denser application of paint that looks more like acrylic paint than the watercolor-like swatches of flesh swimming through the paintings. The experience is sensual and ethereal; equal parts powerful and intense, supple and delicate. From left-to-right, viewers are transported through Quarles' sojourn to Somerset on a zephyr of psychedelic perception evinced by brilliant rainbows, ombre skies falling apart, and harmoniously resonant orbs that appear luminously as if from some alien sky.

In 24 Days Tha Sun’ll Set at 7pm (2022, acrylic on canvas, 77” x 96”)

Somatics are much more powerful than they are given credit for. They presuppose and predicate any and all ideological structures we as humans may create. The subtle viscerality of Quarles’ work is a powerful reminder and ode to that – there is so much more to our experience than meets the eye.

Photos courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Mini Essays

Essay 1

Young Ladies of the Village or Les Demoiselles de village (1852) by Gustave Courbet is an oil on canvas painting showing three young ladies offering a younger cowherd alms. Standing in a verdant valley, the girls are in the Ornans countryside, a common setting for Courbet paintings. The older girls wear simple, pastel dresses of pink, yellow and white which shows their (probably only slightly) higher class standing than the shoeless girl in her tattered blue dress and straw hat hanging behind her. The scene is quintessentially provincial, which did not please the elitist sophisticates of the Salon, who decried the use of the characterization of the girls as “ladies” at all. It was ripped apart as having been lacking taste and skill. Courbet was so affronted by such accusations that he remade the painting in a manner that conveyed his technical prowess much more than the original. Courbet’s lack of detail and perspective in his paintings was a choice that really lays the groundwork for Impressionism.

Perhaps this desire to be well-received (which Courbet struggled with throughout the entirety of his career) is what encouraged him to paint Young Ladies on the Bank of the Seine or Les Demoiselles des bords de la Seine (1857). This painting is more modern as it is set in Paris, so though it is outdoors in a seemingly pastoral setting, it is still in the city. The subject matter is seemingly innocent upon first glance but it’s as shocking a theme as Demoiselles de Village, if not more so. The painting displays a set of young women lounging upon the banks of the Seine in delicate, ornate clothing. The girl in the foreground is dressed in white but clearly in her underclothes, her sensual gaze one of someone in a subdued haze. Her body is so limp she appears to be completely spent. Perhaps her dress serves as her pillow and her shawl, her blanket. A bouquet of flowers rests behind her head. The girl beside her gazes off into the distance, quite detached, gently grasping her own bouquet of flowers. In the boat behind them, there is a man’s hat. 

Courbet -- infamously never one to shy from notoriety or controversy-- took upon himself the task of portraying the working class (which he was not a part of). This fascination with real life people becomes a big part of modern painting. In this painting, instead of three girls (his sisters) from a rural town being characterized as ladies, he portrays two prostitutes. The Salon hated this, but Courbet is combatting the rigid classism of the art elite that ruled the institution. Why are these women less worthy of being the subjects of paintings than ancient damsels, aristocratic wives, and mythological goddess figures? Why couldn’t real women be portrayed in portraiture? Though I wouldn’t argue that Courbet was a feminist-- a provacteur certainly-- the subject matter does break down barriers around what kinds of women serve as subjects, creating a massive space for the brilliant Manet to repeatedly paint prostitutes to an almost obsessive degree. Both paintings serve as revolutionary moments in Courbet’s career that would solidify him as a heavy hitter in the battering against the bulwark that was the Salon’s snobbery.

WORD COUNT: 539

Essay 2

As a segue from the portrayal of prostitutes inspired by Courbet-- to which much of modernism in art is owed--, we come to Manet’s Déjeuner sur L’Herbe (1863). The painting shows a young nude woman accompanied by two fully clothed men and another woman who occupies the background. The woman in the background seems to be washing something in a small river looping behind the trio of figures and like Courbet’s painting, they are in a public park in Paris. This fully nude woman-- Manet’s muse and model, Victorine-- stares directly at the viewer, her clothes positioned behind her, seeming to be slightly amused but not daunted by our intrusion as her companions carry on a conversation. They appear to me as students, perhaps waxing philosophical about some matter of intellectualism or another. This painting harkens to the work of Titian, inspired by his Concerting in the Open Air (1510-1511). This painting shows a real woman-- a working woman participating in an unfortunately popular career for the lower classes at the time-- which did not fit into the social mores of painting in 1860s France. At this time, the Salon de Venus was taking place and we can rest assured that Manet’s painting was not showing a Venus whatsoever, and so this painting was rejected by the salon. It did however get shown at the Salon de Refuses that was ordered by Napoleon III.

We can compare the subject matter to Monet’s Femmes au Jardin (1866). This plein air painting shows four women dressed in peak fashions of the time enjoying the garden of his suburban home. The attention to detail in the dresses the women wear is extravagant and characterizes the painting in the modern period, similarly to how the flaneur suits of the gentlemen in Manet’s painting and the discarded blue and white clothing of Victorine show that the paintings are contemporaries. Sun filters in through the leaves and the dappling of the shadows reflects the impression aspect of Impressionism. A girl sits beneath a tree, shielding herself with a parasol as she contemplatively fingers a bouquet in her lap -- perhaps she is reminiscing about a lover. Another completely shields her face but looks out at the viewer. She stands next to another underneath the tree as the fourth young woman darts behind the tree, her white dress covered in black polka dots streams behind her. Is her fleeing playful? The other women do not seem to be embroiled in play. 

Unlike Déjeuner sur L’Herbe, there is no real context or story in Femmes au Jardin, and the Salon did not receive this painting well at all. Femmes au Jardin is, however, extremely successful in rising to the challenges of the interplay of light and shadow that so fascinated Impressionist painters. Monet brings that tradition to a painting that is not solely landscape, effectively reflecting motion and tactfully expressing silhouette using not only contemporary clothing of the time but the landscape he and the other Impressionists so loved to portray.

WORD COUNT: 501

Essay 3

Seeing and being seen was an important part of Parisian culture in the mid to late 19th century. Leisure was being introduced to society and as modernity swept the town, it brought along with it more people from the country looking for work, more women looking for work, and more of a public life that involved socializing in public spaces. All of these themes are interwoven into the brushstrokes of Auguste Renoir’s Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (1876) and Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1881-82).

Both paintings are situated in public spaces that may have served as a sort of scene for (particularly) the bourgeoisie. Renoir’s painting plays with dappled light and shadow, employing seemingly broken brushstrokes to convey an afternoon scene in a busy area of Montmartre. The area became something of a cultural center and the painting evokes Manet’s Music at the Tuileries (1862) as we seem to enter into a cadre of revelers enjoying music amongst the trees. Some are seated, enjoying a drink. Perhaps these young men are talking to their waitress or perhaps a prostitute-- in this time, it could always be a prostitute. Men and women embrace one another to dance and children are present, lessening the possible underbelly aspect that becomes a strong Impressionist theme.

More akin to Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, we see the presence of newer inventions such as lamps. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère not only engages these new luminaries but challenges perspective by placing the subject in front of a mirror, so we see that she is looking rather deflated as she speaks to a customer at the bar of a very well known event space. The mirrors double everything but they may even make an infinite loop by facing one another. While Renoir’s painting exhibits a certain gaiety, there is a level of despair in Manet’s that comes from being a working woman in this brightly lit scene. The white orbs displayed in the mirror behind the young lady with flowers tucked into her bosom are slightly blinding and the painting feels less like a reverie and more like a fever dream of fear and loathing, a certain distortion of reality that that mirror-to-mirror effect over her left shoulder may convey.

We see a performer’s feet in the top left corner of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, signaling a great attention to detail despite the obvious brushstrokes characterizing some of the painting. It becomes very fantastic but not in as glamorous a way as we may perceive of it, it being set in a famous music hall. The young lady’s blank expression expresses a vacancy that implies she is no longer present in reality -- perhaps she is on autopilot-- thus adding another layer of disengagement from reality while employing Realism. Manet’s painting was accepted by the salon, which is surprising considering that the Salon were not huge fans of his.

WORD COUNT: 484

Essay 4

Another important hallmark of Impressionist painting was the train station. Painters of the time were oft fascinated by the industrial trappings and mechanisms that came with modernity as signs of human advancement and innovation. What better place to survey this than the train station? Many artists set up their canvas at the new train station that would shuttle folks to the suburbs and back called Gare St Lazare on the edge of Paris. Manet even had a studio by the station, which he painted into his Gare St Lazare (1872-73). Five years later, the Impressionist painter Monet would create a famous painting of the same subject matter but that is distinctly different.

The train station in Manet’s painting is more implied than it is present. The real subject of the painting is the woman and little girl outside the station fence. We know that they are outside because we see a plume of smoke on the other side, which the young girl is facing, giving us a great view of her calf-length white dress and it’s giant blue bow. Beside her sits a young woman who may be her nanny. The woman’s hat doesn’t match her dress, implying that she is not of a very sophisticated class. She is not likely the girl’s mother or sister as their dresses do not match. She holds a book and a sleeping dog. This may not be a prostitute, but she is still a working woman, a subject much beloved by Manet. This painting reads more as a portrait which perhaps accounts for why it was accepted at the Salon. 

The brilliant white of Manet’s Gare St Lazare is a bit of a departure from his usual palette and is owed to the Impressionists who enjoyed working with light and shadow in their paintings, not as the old masters did but in new and adventurous ways that did not win much favor at the salon. Where we are also used to seeing his paintings set in pastoral settings, this is not the case here. This change of scenery reflects the passage of time and speaks to the impact on modern Paris made by Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann.

Monet’s Gare St Lazare (1877) is inarguably more centered on the train station itself. It appears that the viewer stands on a platform between the tracks, so that we see a train arriving and perhaps one departing. We are under the glass roof and have view of the elegant moulding that holds up the glass as well as the unlit lanterns. Steam obscures much of the sky as it pours from the chimneys of both the arriving and departing trains. We see a taste of Haussmanization in this painting depicted in the roof and facade of a far off building. Monet would paint this same painting over and over again, studying the differences in light and mood as it related to time-- and what better place to speak to the passage of time than a train station (other than perhaps a clock tower). 

WORD COUNT: 506

 Op Ed Articles

The Subliminals Community 

(published by Polyester Zine in 2023) 

I discovered the Law of Attraction (LOA) and manifestation in 2011 at the end of my junior year of high school via the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Released in 2006, the self-help book essentially repackages the Hermetic Principles – particularly the first, ‘All Is Mind’ – and presents it to a new millennium, stating that what we think dictates our physical reality. As a baby witch, I found this very attractive. 

Unfortunately, as I got older and learned more, my feelings shifted to skepticism: LOA gaslights people into believing that their actions, ideas, and wants are the only things that matter in this life. Not only does it contribute to what psychologists call the endemic of narcissism but it is the perfect psyop of capitalism. It forces disenfranchised people to ignore the exploitative structures and actions put upon them by their oppressors and blame themselves for systemic issues like poverty and climate change: 

“If I hadn’t had a negative thought, I wouldn’t have had that traumatic experience.” 

“I didn’t get those concert tickets I can’t afford despite working over 40 hours a week because I secretly believe I’m unworthy and that stopped the manifestation; not because of the barrier of poverty and labor exploitation.” 

The toxic positivity of the LOA community creates an unsafe space for delusion, spiritual bypassing, and victim blaming to proliferate. This is probably why the most prominent personalities among manifestation evangelicals are predominantly white, cisgendered, heterosexual, socially desirable men followed by women. The entire premise of LOA wholesale discounts colonial structures of cisheteropatriarchy, anti-indigeneity, anti-Blackness, racism, capitalism, classism, and industrialism. 

No, thanks. 

Ten years after I first came across LOA, a video called “[SPELL] magical angel skull and defined face - by KOTTIE” came across my YouTube homepage. I didn’t know what a “magical angel skull" was but I was mesmerized by the beautiful 3D rendered face suspended in black on the title card. Despite some apprehension, I clicked on the video, bracing myself for impact. 

Upon reading the description, I realized the video was a subliminal – a manifestation tool that I had been avoiding due to a lack of trust in the manifestation community. A subliminal is a video or audio message which contains an affirmation. Admittedly I knew very little about subliminals outside of their being used to shift your subconscious mind. I – like many subliminal avoidant folks – shied away in fear that a sub maker might put in affirmations that could cause me harm or bring about some undesirable result. 

When I pressed play, mechanical whirs purred atop Richard Clayderman’s dark, enchanting Mariage d'Amour as ethereal avatars rotated on the screen, as if examining a character for a video game. It was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I took it as a sign to learn more and began voraciously scouring Google for more information about the ins and outs of subliminals as well as what the fuck an angel skull is.

The difference between subliminals and other manifestation tools is that they operate on a deeper psychological level and are therefore able to rewire our operating system more effectively. Scripting and affirmations sit on top of the subconscious, perhaps slowly shifting your subconscious state a little bit over long periods of time whereas subliminals are crafted to enter your subconscious immediately, shifting your mental operations from within. Considering that 95% of our cognitive functioning happens in the subconscious and unconscious mind, mastering the subconscious is key for mastering our lives. 

According to licensed hypnotherapist and sub community pioneer, CJ Booker, “a subliminal is a message that is being passed into your subconscious, bypassing the critical factor… the advantage of a subliminal is that you don’t have to concentrate to accept that message… A subliminal message is just something that’s passing into your mind without you consciously realizing it’s happening.” 

The types of subs discussed here are videos or audio files with messages set to a near imperceptible volume layered under music and sometimes various forms of noise. Some sub makers also put nearly invisible messages on the video alongside the layered audio to seed into the viewer’s subconscious.

If it sounds like magick, it’s not. It’s implanting an idea into your subconscious mind in order to shift your mental framework using simple psychology. 

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung taught that the conscious mind can only focus on so much so it pushes other, seemingly inconsequential things into the subconscious. Subliminals work to code our subconscious – from which the vast majority of our thinking and behavior stems – with thoughts that align with the type of reality we want. 

“Anything your subconscious can do, a subliminal can help it do,” says Booker. 

I’m a year into my subliminal journey and can confirm that they work. I’m not running empirical tests and I can only speak for myself, but I’ve seen a marked change primarily in my perception and self-concept – two things I intentionally focused on. And contrary to what I previously thought, subs are generally low risk. Most sub makers list what affirmations they use and what the desired results are. There are “UG” (underground) submakers that make toxic subs in order to be edgy, but the community is generally well-intentioned otherwise.

Where LOA evangelicals push the importance of belief and not having any doubt as parts of manifesting a new reality with subliminals, Booker completely disagrees. 

“None of that matters,” Booker explains. “It’s just like lifting a weight. It doesn’t matter if you have faith in weight lifting. Your [sic] muscle’s still doing the work. Same thing with a subliminal. If you’re listening to those messages and they’re passing into your subconscious, your subconscious is still doing the work regardless of your belief structure.” 

After over a decade of being unable to think myself rich and well, it turned out that getting sober in recovery, going to therapy, cutting off my perpetrators, and getting on antidepressants was the real solution to my many problems. More emotionally laborious than writing LOA scripts about the life I yearn for, but also more effective and actually less time consuming. I use the subliminals to amplify the work I do by helping to rewrite the scripts running in my subconscious that urge me towards self-sabotage. 

Such a level of grounding in a reality that is wrought with suffering and pain, a reality constantly reminding us that the only things we really have any control over are our own actions can be incredibly difficult for people who have some sort of unconscious, inborn need to pretend that that doesn’t exist – or at least it doesn’t have to for them. It makes sense that it appeals to people with privilege who don’t want to be accountable to it. It’s easier to blame people who don’t have it as good as you as “just being too negative”. It’s harder to admit that maybe you didn’t manifest it – maybe it was just easier for you to get because of your access to power and resources. 

However, reducing the entire sub community to being entitled and self-absorbed (like some LOA critics have) is unfair. Many comments under money manifestation subliminals on YouTube are from adolescents trying to manifest money to help their parents with bills and lessen the stress their caregivers are bearing. 

Subs appeal to teenagers because they are no strangers to desperation and a sense of powerlessness. They are bombarded with marketing schemes that tell them they need to change who they are and what they look like in order to be included in the grand scheme that is our social paradigm. At such a critical time in the development of personal identity and agency, it often fuels the flames of confusion and chaos. This is compounded by their general lack of access to power and/or resources to have the impact they desire on the world around them. If all they have is internet access, that’s all they need to start manifesting a better life. This can feel deeply empowering, especially if they begin to see their desired results. Conversely, it can also become another tool for feeding unhealthy ideations and self-harm.

I’ve felt desperate. I’ve wanted to be accepted, to be popular, to be loved. I’ve thought that the only way that that could happen was by having things others had or wanted. While I began disabusing myself of that faulty framework when I began getting sober at age 23, many people go their entire lives laboring under this false impression. From a sociological perspective, I don’t blame them. We are indoctrinated into a capitalist society that feeds on our division and self loathing – of course it is common, even normal to suffer from such delusions. 

Many in the manifestation community are just disenfranchised people looking for salvation. 

Of course, I’m not the only person living in the world nor am I the Alpha and Omega. I have to accept that sometimes my SP (special person) doesn’t like me back and there’s nothing I can do about that (and that it is ethically wrong and morally bankrupt to try to use supernatural or otherwise mundane means to control their thoughts, feelings, and actions). I have to concede that no matter what I do, there may never be an end to anti-Blackness or poverty in my home country. My subliminal journey is not about controlling the universe. It’s about reprogramming my subconscious mind as much as possible in order to transcend trauma and regain agency. In my experience, it works. 

WORD COUNT: 1539

Colorism As A Global Social Issue

(published by The Mighty in 2020) 

The first recorded use of the term “colorism” comes from Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose, in the essay “If the Present Looks Like the Past, What Does the Future Look Like?” in which Walker defines colorism as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color”. Walker is writing a letter to a friend whose skin color is lighter in complexion in which Walker is unpacking the dichotomy between dark-skinned Black women and light-skinned Black women. When coming upon the issue of “the hostility many black black women feel toward light-skinned black women”, Walker’s friend says, “Well, I’m light. It’s not my fault. And I’m not going to apologize for it.” Walker explains that nobody is looking for an apology -- women who are centered more in the darker region of the complexion spectrum are looking for validation and equity. 

I often say that privilege breeds ignorance and ignorance breeds death. The calumny, character assassination, and execrable degradation hurled at darker skinned folks not solely in the Black community but in all communities existing within this globalized society of violent racial bigotry, classism, misogyny, and other oppressive hierarchies is a fact. The unfortunate truth that follows is that those whose privilege shields them from experiencing such violence first-hand are able to-- and often do-- shroud themselves in ignorance that can be -- and often is-- fatal to their disenfranchised complements. 

While it may not be the design of those with more social standing and privilege that others should suffer in order to account for their perceived luxuries in life, their mere existence exacerbates a savage unbalance. It is not enough to simply not consciously be creating more inequity, nor is it enough to simply acknowledge where it exists. If people of privilege are not actively rooting the dismantling of oppressive systems into the foundation of their life practice every single day, they are actively perpetuating them and therein actively contributing to the oppression of others. So, “well, I’m light. It’s not my fault. And I’m not going to apologize for it,” is dismissive, cavalier, and frankly abusive.

As the conversation around colorism becomes more present in the zeitgeist due to issues of anti-Black violence and oppression becoming more salient, the fact that anti-blackness is pervasive is being subsumed into colonialism and the racism that was created by Thomas Jefferson in order to justify enslaving Black Africans. While American slavery certainly played an important role in the colorism of the Black community, global classism tied to colorism actually served these white supremacist ideations much more than the other way ‘round. 

Within South Asian communities that largely practice or have been impacted by the caste system of Hinduism, having darker (kaalo) skin is seen as being less beautiful than having lighter (forsha) skin. The fairer one was the closer one was to god (Brahman)-- even the term speaks to the ingraining of lighter (and therein whiter) being more beautiful, soft, elegant, civilized, refined.  The darker one's complexion, the further along the gradation of class a person falls until they find themselves in the lowest of castes—Untouchables. And while this may be a known and active structure in South Asia, all of the aforementioned terms associated with lighter skin tone are bereft of darker communities within this anti-black hegemony, namely for people of African descent. Perhaps the reason we don’t have as much insight into pre-colonial colorism in African countries is because of the attempt to destroy African history by white colonizers, labeling it a “dark continent”. 

In civilizations the world over, complexion denoted (and still denotes) socioeconomic standing. In the agricultural societies that gave way to our industrial forerunners, the lower classes labored in the fields and were therefore darker than the upper classes who were able to find leisurely protection from the sun’s hot beams indoors. This distinction encouraged practices of shielding one’s skin from the sun using parasols and such in order to avoid becoming darker, and this “fairness” became indicative of beauty and grace, especially for women. These practices are still in use today, with parents scolding children from staying in the sun for too long lest they become “too black” and women in East Asian countries walking outdoors with parasols in order to protect the so-called delicate nature of their paleness. In more extreme-- but certainly not uncommon-- cases, people turn to the use of skin bleaching to effectuate these barbaric beauty standards. Skin bleaching products are actively used all over the world-- all over Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, and yes, the Americas. 

Wherever there exists class hierarchy, it seems, colorism exists because classist oppression, especially rooted in phenological presentation, predates whiteness and white supremacy as we know it today and it is pervasive to global societies. Meanwhile white people have reached such an ungodly level of global class privilege that as opposed to a tan being indicative of being of the lower classes, getting a “healthy glow” indicates having the space and time to have a leisurely lounge in the sun somewhere warm, potentially even tropical -- probably a colony or protectorate of some Western country. Where communities of Black, Indigenous, and people of color are a massive global market for skin bleach, white people have a much less nefarious market for self-tanner and a (potentially equally insidious) tanning salon culture.

As a dark-skinned Black non-binary person who was assigned female at birth and is still largely perceived as a woman, I -- like Alice Walker -- fall squarely in the “brown” section of the complexion spectrum. Regardless of not being “dark dark skinned”, I am not light-skinned and therefore face the backlash of anti-Blackness and colorism. I’ve been encouraged to have children with white men in order to ensure that my children show up in photos, something I am still processing seven years later. I am still processing the low self-esteem and self-worth that developed from not being appreciated by the boys I had crushes on as a child. I am still overcoming my resentment towards light-skinned Black women, which is not easy. 

It is no easier to process and transcend these traumas that proliferate as demons that hound my wellness and betray my peace when people claim that their disregard for people my complexion or darker is simply a matter of preference that has nothing to do with racism, misogyny, and colorism. It is no easier when people claim that they do not receive privilege and opportunity because they fall closer to monoliths of beauty and propriety. It may seem like a superficial quandary but within a capitalist patriarchy, the level of attraction a person who is-- for all intents and purposes-- female or femme-presenting holds is majorly proportional to their economic well-being and quality of life; it can genuinely feel like the difference between life or death. This may be shifting as the modern workplace reconciles with feminism, but the brutal reality is reflected in wage gaps and racist rules of professional appearance.

Nobody wants to break with the idea that they are a “good person” and that none of their actions are accountable for subjugating or disenfranchising others. While being a “good person” is a concept that needs to be done away with, being effectively anti-racist and/or an abolitionist, one must actively acknowledge and accept their privilege and leverage it for the advancement of those it exploits. Dismissing the suffering one receives at the expense of another is violent. 

Justice is not demanding an apology for something that is out of anyone’s control, such as being born light in complexion or being a cis male or being heterosexual. What justice demands in order to truly drive its roots into the foundations of our social interactions in this corrupt world are practices of equity carried out by privileged people, starting with the acknowledgment of privilege, inequality and inequity, and a real commitment to balancing the scales. It needs people of privilege to stop aligning themselves with the systems that actually exploit all of us and start having compassion for those who have very naturally felt derision and contempt for the seeming agents of their debasement. But ultimately, justice demands an understanding that while people may be vehicles and sometimes practitioners of the systems of exploitation, it is truly the system and the ideology it is founded upon that warrants scorn and that the only true liberation can only come from an exposition of the toxic truth of these practices and a thorough removal of all traces of these dastardly philosophies.

WORD COUNT: 1411

Decolonize This Pussy

(published by The Freque in 2019)

I’m not sure if the use of the word “pussy” as an insult has fallen out of practice, but I don’t hear it as much as I used to. They used it to insult vaginas and people they assumed had vaginas. They used it to humiliate people they assumed did not have vaginas who did not present hyper masculine enough. Essentially, the term “pussy” has come to be associated with vaginas which are now associated with femininity; and femininity has come to be associated with weakness, cowardice, lack of intelligence. Of course, this logic is completely erroneous, but it grew to be a widespread phenomenon across the world by the time I was in middle school.

A decade and a half later, I don’t know if people are still using it in that sense because I haven’t heard it in a while. That may be a sign that people are becoming less ignorant, but it also may be because as an adult, I have the power of choice.

In middle school, I had little choice of who I had to share space with, at home and in public. Now, I do. I choose to surround myself with people who value femininity and masculinity in equal measure. The people I associate with understand that life is a spectrum, not a binary. We agree that life is filtered through our human perception and that the grand truth is transcendent of our corporeal forms.

My spiritual belief that I am more than the body I live in is the foundation for my non-binary, pansexual identity and it serves as a portal through which I find liberation. I do my best to keep out anyone who does not support that freedom, which means anyone who buys into the colonial idea that “feminine” (or receptive, internalized) energy is harmful, that only “masculine” (or active, externalized) is of value, and that neutral (balanced) energy simply does not even exist. I do my best to have boundaries that protect me from people who attribute these characteristics to people’s sex organs, especially those who attempt to police how people of certain (usually assumed) sexes should express said characteristics. I do my best to not participate in misogyny and transphobia not solely because it’s violent and oppressive, but also because it’s reductive and crude.

These ideologies are mechanisms of colonialism -- a false matrix that has been upheld by pillars of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, industrialism, spiritualism. One of the most ancient truths of this debasing paradigm that it has made the most violent and virulent attempts to hide is that the so-called "pussy" is a place of power that exists within every body, regardless of sexual organs.

It’s our second chakra -- or energy center-- and it’s called the Sacral Chakra or the Svadisthana, which is Sanskrit for “where your being is established”. It exists in our ethereal body -- that is, our energetic body-- which exists without the confines of human biology. The Svadisthana is the seat of our ability to co-create our experience alongside the Universe, essentially serving as the vessel through which our hopes, dreams, and visions are birthed through. This act of reproduction that all lifeforms are always engaged in requires the “feminine” act of receiving, the mutable act of processing, and the “masculine” act of expressing. These energies work with one another to balance each other out. Creation is holistically non-binary.

If the process of creation is internal, that product of it is expressed through our actions and inactions. You may have heard it said, “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” This quote by the philosopher Will Durant perfectly sums up an idea inspired by Aristotle but is deeply intrinsic to our “being”. “Feminine” energy exists in every part of the process whether in large part or nominally. It is absolutely vital to living a satisfying life of fulfillment to express all of ourselves, grounded in our Truth, as often as we possibly can. It is essential to having a healthy spiritual reproductive system to honor all aspects of ourSelves.

When the Svadisthana chakra is blocked by fear, we feel completely out of touch and out of our power. This sense of uselessness can lead to dissociation and depression. We are unable to trust ourselves or our decisions because our actions are out of alignment with our beliefs, usually taking us further and further away from our happiness. This fear of self results in fear of intimacy which creates a lack of ability to connect with the world around us. This often develops a sense of isolation and deep, existential loneliness.

When it is balanced, we exist in a joyous union with our environment, emboldened by our creative power! We are passionate, invigorated by the idea of new life! We know that we live in a world of limitless potential and infinite possibility, and that we have some say in what that looks and feels like. No person, place, thing, ideological system can keep us from living our best life. This is the precise reason why the patriarchy has sought to oppress, imprison, and exploit the "pussy"-- or divine femininity-- for millennia.

The idea of femininity even being divine is completely erased from the framework of dominating hegemonies the world over. Femmes show up as the devolution of all things good, incapable of embodying moral or ethical fiber. The reality of the Divine Feminine is omnipresent yet it has been physically, ideologically, and spiritually villainized in cultures all around the world.

Though the virtual enslavement of biological females and femme identifying people along with the persecution of people who do not identify on the binary was already a burgeoning reality in some pre-colonial societies, colonization expedited this subjugation of femininity which has wrought complete destruction upon our societal, cultural, and genetic makeup.

The term “occult” has taken on a frightful connotation of demonic sacrifices and unspeakable acts against AFAB people and children, but it literally refers to that which is hidden. Within the realm of the esoteric, spirituality and magick are seen as innately feminine because they are practices that are grounded in the intangible realms. Because we are spiritual beings consciously existing in the physical, our true power resides in the unseen planes of existence. It stands to reason, then, that those people that have spent thousands of years attempting to conquer and enslave the world would not want us to be able to tap into that wild, preternatural, all-powerful source.

The shame associated with proximity to this deeply primal part of ourselves that is present in such human gifts as sensitivity, empathy, compassion, heartfelt emotion is so deeply encoded into our globalized culture that it seems like it has always been this way which makes it so easy to believe that it will always remain as such. Records of civilization, however, tell us that this is a relatively new phenomenon.

It is gut-wrenchingly difficult for so many of us to imagine a life that is not defined by the restrictions imposed upon us by these pernicious hierarchies and structures of oppression. It activates within us a trauma response that is wired so deep that many of us don’t bother to question that emotional response, especially because the history of such abuse is not commonly held or pursued knowledge.

This is especially true of people who hold positions of privilege, because it’s easier to ignore those feelings that something is wrong when that something brings us comforts not afforded to others. Fear of losing such comforts instead of gaining it for those going without can be a very powerful barrier to action. The cultural allowances of our designated roles in society often serve as invisible lines in the sand for how far our aspirations can go; we often toe that line in order to not rock the boat because though our minds may not consciously remember the consequences, our bodies do.

It takes a rebellious spirit to breach those boundaries because doing so has traditionally resulted in such punishments as humiliation, alienation, torture, and oftentimes death -- the witch hunts in both Europe and the United States being prime examples of this, so much so that any dogged pursuit of any individuals held in contempt to the system is often colloquially referred to as a “witch hunt”.

The practice of traditional indigenous spirituality was painted as barbaric, demonic, and evil by the so-called Christian settlers of the Americas. They savagely drove these practices into the shadows, forcing Christianity on the enslaved peoples with acts of brutality such as beating, burning, mutilating, and sexually assaulting people caught participating in their ancestral practices. For this reason, oppressed people draped a thin veneer of colonizer Christianity over their traditions in order to continue practicing in secret. This act of survival allowed many traditional practices to still exist in some form today through such vehicles as santeria and hoodoo.

Colonizer Christianity-- a holistically aspiritual and hypocritical version of Christianity that exists completely in violation of the teachings of Yeshua the Nazarene-- was a vehicle for spiritual disempowerment all over the world. It introduced binary opposition specifically along the lines of gender where it rarely existed before, completely marginalizing the third (or in-between) gender that existed in so many cultures globally. Instead of promoting unity with one another and the environment, it created competition which laid the groundwork for capitalism to come in, especially in places where Protestantism was the dominant practice. In this way, oppressors were able to paint the picture that the oppressed people were suffering because of their own evil behavior and “the sins of the father”-- that is the heathenism of their ancestors. They had to pay for their debaucherous ways and they did this through backbreaking labor and other forms of cruelty inflicted upon them. If God didn’t want it to be so, then it wouldn’t be happening.

We know that people did not wholesale buy into this thinking and that there were slave rebellions that ultimately ended in global abolition of slavery and decolonization, but the wreckage remains. Having been spiritually despoiled, there still exists so much shame around claiming our power and agency for creativity and creation via restoration of our unique heritages.

Due to our level of consciousness, humans are able to impact the material realm in ways that no other species on Earth can. Forgetting or misunderstanding this power is incredibly dangerous and is a direct cause of the destruction of this planet and its ecological environment. The monolithic polarization of colonialism has created a gulf between us and the living being that is planet Earth as well as the rest of her inhabitants, between us and the Universe itself. This is how we are able to destroy the natural world with seeming impunity, poisoning the world's waterways, desecrating its forests, massacring the bees as if we don’t absolutely need these things to survive.

This inherent narcissism in our cultural thinking is indicative of an extremely warped axis of energy and a complete collective lack of Alignment. While it starts in the root, it is carried out in the sacral. This is by no means the sole component of the astral pussy or the feminine Divine, but it is integral to creating holistically fulfilling relationships with the people, places, and things that make up our own personal matrix as well as that of the Collective.

None of us are able to strike our own healthy, personal balance without first reconciling our own femininity. This is not possible when we are still imprisoned in the alienating abyss created by colonialism that seeks to isolate us in order to control our thoughts, behaviors and actions. It may awaken a fear that is bone deep, but it is of absolute necessity.

Only by actually facing our Shadow and doing this sacred Work are we able to understand that the thing we really fear is ourselves, our truths, and our power. From that place, we are able to see how we are out of Alignment with our Inner Truth. We are then able to bridge those gaping chasms that ache for connection, compassion, and unconditional love and reintegrate all of the fragmented, disparate parts of ourselves. In this space, we are given the opportunity to reclaim our agency and autonomy, therein creating a more trusting relationship between our primal Self, our present self, and our Higher Self. By healing our relationship with ourSelves and our astral pussy, we are able to create healthy relationships with the world around us in which we stand firmly and proudly in our Truth, casting off the sacrilegious death shroud of colonialism in exchange for our freedom. Then-- and only then-- are we able to be truly empowered.

In order to truly pursue spiritual liberation, cultural revolution, social advancement, and transcendence of our collective past trauma we must begin decolonizing our interactions with the feminine and claiming the power in our spiritual pussy, our sacred sexuality, and our divine femininity!

WORD COUNT: 2136

Academic Writing

Body Dysmorphia: The Social Exploitation of the Body → https://bit.ly/4jJujXy

Copy of The Social Exploitation of the Body

Worn Histories: West African Dress, Colonial Violence, and the Struggle for Sartorial Sovereignty → https://bit.ly/4kFMFds 

 Copy of Worn Histories

Copywriting

JADALAREIGN Bio Artist Bio

A.

JADALAREIGN is a Brooklyn-based DJ, producer, and organizer who is best known for unifying the vast variety of expression that is diasporic Blackness to forge community and create eclectic rhythms. As the state of the world and the music industry shifts rapidly, JADA continues to adapt, working purposefully in any and every environment to cultivate equity and sovereignty for Black women and marginalized genders in and outside of music.

WORD COUNT: 68

B.

New York native JADALAREIGN is a Brooklyn-based DJ, producer and organizer who is best known for unifying the vast variety of expression that is diasporic Blackness to forge community and create eclectic rhythms to promote joy and healing. While JADA has always had an ear for multicultural sounds, her focus is on underground genres of dance music and progressing the foundation that was laid by the Black music-makers whose legacies and histories continue to inspire her every day. As the state of the world and the music industry shifts rapidly, JADA continues to adapt, working purposefully in any and every environment to cultivate equity and sovereignty for Black women and marginalized genders in and outside of music.

WORD COUNT: 117

C.

JADALAREIGN is a Brooklyn-based DJ, producer, and organizer who is best known for unifying the vast variety of expression that is diasporic Blackness to create not only community but an eclectic sound that has gotten people to move their bodies for the past five years. While JADA has always had an ear for multicultural sounds, her current focus is on underground subgenres of dance and progressing the foundation that was laid by the Black music-makers whose legacies and histories continue to inspire her every day. As the state of the world and the music industry shifts rapidly, JADA continues to adapt, working purposefully in any and every environment to cultivate equity and sovereignty for Black women and marginalized genders in and outside of music.

WORD COUNT: 124

D.

Brooklyn-based DJ and New York native JADALAREIGN is also a producer and organizer who is best known for unifying the vast variety of expression that is diasporic Blackness to forge community and create an eclectic sound that has gotten people to move their bodies for the past five years. While JADA has always had an ear for multicultural sounds, her current focus is on underground subgenres of dance and progressing the foundation that was laid by the Black music-makers whose legacies and histories continue to inspire her every day.

JADA’s talent for creating harmony is not singular to music -- she also does the life-giving work of cultivating community in spaces where resources and opportunity are long overdue. Having been featured on dance music platforms across the world as well as publications like Vibe, i-D, and Essence, JADA has used her platform to give back to the community that has inspired her by creating various music industry-related workshops for marginalized people as a form of cultural revolution. 

In her efforts to catalyze social progress through music, JADA created SKILLSHARE, a safe space for aspiring DJs of marginalized identities to learn the in’s and out’s of turning DJing from a hobby to a career but is now being restructured into an online resource. JADA has also worked with legends of the dance music underground such as FIVEBOI to co-produce their intersectional virtual workshop, In Session which saw 300+ participants tuning in from at least 5 different continents. 

As the state of the world and the music industry shifts rapidly, JADA continues to adapt, working purposefully in any and every environment to cultivate equity and sovereignty for Black women and marginalized genders in and outside of music.

WORD COUNT: 284