THE FULL SET & BLINK

The ‘Full Set’ is a playful origin story that plays with the complex intersectionality of American Culture. This piece creates a reason to gather, connect, and celebrate Blackness.

Black culture has often been exoticized commodified or downplayed when authored by Black people. However, when co-opted, validated, or appropriated by white people it is celebrated and embraced. For example, Florence Griffith Joyner brought nail art to the masses in the late 1980s. At that time this style was considered ghetto, gaudy, and unprofessional. Fast forward to now this trend is considered chic, and vastly represented but mostly because it was validated by white culture. The issue with this is that by removing origin, the story is half told and authorship is erased. This erasure creates more invisibility to the contributions to culture by Black people and in the case of nail art, Asian people as well.

This project serves to dismantle the constant appropriation of Black culture in a fun playful way. It is a way for ‘Blackness’ to iconically take up and occupy the spaces we have previously been shut out of, underrepresented, or pushed out of.