“And the world waited. To caress her”
And the world waited. To caress her” explores quiet as a state of being that brings one closer to the full extent of their humanity. In so doing, it plays upon Audre Lorde’s conceptualization of the erotic not as sexual desire, but as a way of feeling deeply and intimately, and as the threshold to an ever-emergent, hidden interiority.
Outside, in the hall, a list of what the artist finds pleasure in is activated by the sun. At night, it disappears without a trace – a retreat into a kind of quiet borne not out of resistance, but out of the inability of any one thing to capture that which cannot ever be fully glimpsed or understood.
Key words: the erotic; Black interiority; pleasure; self-portrait; the sun; Audre Lorde; the sovereingty of quiet; Black aliveness
And the world waited. to caress her; custom light and built structure, installation at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Canada, 2020
And the world waited. to caress her; site-specific vinyl installation at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Canada, 2020