Before she was 15 feet tall, inflatable, and covered in projected light, Matilda was a tiny character created almost a decade ago by one of our members.

Her story starts around 2007–2008. Online shopping was still relatively new. Selling work with a card at a craft fair felt futuristic. And when it came to cute characters, illustrations, products, and collectibles featuring Black girls and melanated people, there wasn’t much to choose from.

There was plenty of cute. We just rarely got to be part of it.

So, one of our members created her own.

Matilda was created from a desire to see herself in a soft space. A little Black girl who could be playful, curious, weird, stylish, imaginative, tender, adventurous, and completely at home in her own world.

And people connected with her.

Matilda began showing up on artwork and objects and eventually made her way into the world, including an appearance at one of the early AfroPunk block parties in Fort Greene. What started as one person making something she wanted to see became something other people could see themselves in too.

So, why bring her back now?

Almost 2 decades later, we found ourselves thinking about Matilda again.

We’ve been thinking a lot about who gets access to softness. Who gets protected. Who gets to be carefree, strange, joyful, vulnerable, loud, playful, and fully imagined.

We’ve also been thinking about the racial hierarchies embedded in American life, the continued disinvestment in Black and melanated communities, and what it means to keep making spaces for ourselves within all of that.

And suddenly, our tiny mighty character didn’t feel so tiny anymore.

It felt like time to bring Matilda back.

In Light of Us

We are true believers in cultivating the world you want to live in.

We believe in the power of people. In imagination, intention, community, and work. In making room for joy alongside everything else we carry.

In Light of Us takes those ideas and makes them BIG.

For BLINK Cincinnati 2026, Matilda has been transformed into a monumental inflatable sculpture and projection installation. Light, animation, imagery, pattern, history, and imagination move across her surface, allowing this character created years ago to continuously transform in front of us.

Before heading to Cincinnati, Matilda is also showing up right in our own backyard with a new mural at Bed-Stuy Walls in Brooklyn, 651 Lexington Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11221.

A tiny drawing has become a mural.

A character has become a sculpture.

A little idea about seeing ourselves differently has grown to take up a whole lot of space.

Sometimes the tiny mighty is exactly what we need.

Come Play With Us in Cincinnati

We’re taking over Cincinnati for a bit.

Alongside the debut of In Light of Us at BLINK, we’re popping up during Cincinnati Art Week with artwork, pieces from our Soft Spaces and Ride the Animals worlds, Matilda prototypes and experiments, limited editions, live programming, merch, and a few other things we’ve been cooking up.

If you’ve ever thought about traveling to come see one of our projects, this is a good one.

Come see Matilda in all her giant glory and spend some time in our world.

Take a Little Matilda With You

Of course, bringing Matilda back also meant returning her to some of the places where she began: things you can hold, wear, collect, gift, and live with.

We’ve created a collection of In Light of Us and Matilda pieces that pull from the characters, textures, experiments, and visual worlds surrounding the project.

A little piece of the tiny mighty.