PROCLIVITY • Elsewhere Museum
Proclivity delves into the paradox of seeking understanding through seemingly destructive acts. Portals emerge through broken mirrors overhead as a symbolic representation of transcending conventional understanding, offering glimpses into something unattainable. Ripples of this exploration translate with childlike wonder, personified through the juxtaposition of reality and perceived truth.
Through this ongoing series of work, I explore the evolution of ideas and their manifestation over a course of time. In the past, I engaged in feeble attempts at self-atonement that set off a chain reaction of consequences. Those actions alchemize through tangible expressions of a relentless pursuit. I document my struggle with being immersed in the day-to-day, employing varied expressions to understand the complex interplay of growth and destruction. Through this lens, I sought clarity as a grounding force, reflecting on what has been and what is yet to come in the name of preservation.
DEFINITION
noun: as in tendency — a habitual attraction to some activity or thing.
CONCEPTION
OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2023
ESSAY
PROCLIVITY, my permanent installation at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC, is both a meditation and deeply personal reflection of my own tendencies—particularly my relationship with time, avoidance, and the weight of history. In a world that often demands certainty and linear progression, I found myself lost in the liminal — a space where clarity wavers and transmutation seeks validation.
The activation of this space demanded physical labor, but it also required me to reckon with the reality of limitation. Elsewhere operates under a unique philosophy: “nothing goes in, nothing goes out.” I had to work within the constraints of found objects—an old toilet and sink still attached to their original placements, massive rusted box springs suspended from the ceiling, abandoned promotional materials, and remnants of past installations. What emerged from these limitations was a space that resembled a dilapidated jewelry box, where the flashes of overhead mirrors reflected something both beautiful and broken. Participants are invited to leave small objects as offerings, contributing to a growing archive of collective memory and impermanence.
In my initial plans, I intended to include sound — a further layer to immerse the viewer. As the project unfolded, I abandoned this addition. The absence itself became a statement. Proclivity is about what is left unsaid, what remains unspoken yet still shapes the atmosphere of a space. The poems attached onto the walls, including Treaty of Silence, gave voice to this absence, exploring the contradictions of effort, the struggle of trying while grieving, and the quiet negotiations we make with ourselves in order to move forward.
Beyond the personal, my time in Greensboro also confronted me with the broader implications of erasure. My research into the forgotten Black history on the city’s periphery led me to create What Happened to Greensboro?, a piece that reflects on the zoning and housing developments that have systematically displaced communities. The jagged black dashes in the piece serve as a metaphor for the presented “plans” that ultimately resulted in destruction, while the collapsing houses at the bottom mirror the reality of entire neighborhoods being erased. Through conversations with the museum’s Executive Director, I began questioning the ethics of urban development, a thread that connects directly to displacement issues I had already witnessed in other cities.
Through overthought procrastination or instinctive mark-making, my work lives in the tension between structure and fluidity. I am continually drawn to the interplay of contrast: color and shadow, abstraction and realism, movement and stillness. My work is not separate from my existence: I have always sought to understand the subtext beneath words, the history behind a moment, the unseen forces that shape what is felt yet unspoken. I am a collector of remnants, memories, objects, gestures — of the almost-intangible moments that leave imprints without explanation. It is for the sake of witnessing: a testament of honoring what has shaped me.
PROCLIVITY is a room of contradiction: a space that invites stillness while exposing rupture, a place that allows for reflection while quietly demanding confrontation. In creating it, I confronted myself. My tendency to delay out of fear, the way I negotiate with time, my own contradictions—these were all embedded in the process. What remains now is not just an installation but an invitation for others to step into the liminal, to leave something behind, and to witness what persists.