bio

When do you first remember being creative, and what first drew you to it?

My first real creative act was trying to grow mango trees from seed in Chicago. My mom used to take me to the Latin market and tell me the mangoes were from our homeland. I loved them so much I wanted to grow my own, so I’d save the seeds and try to plant them. I never managed to grow my own piece of home, but it was creative thinking all the same. Later I learned that in the Haitian countryside, mothers bury a seed with their child’s placenta, and by the time the child comes of age, they have their own tree bearing fruit. I never had that experience, but in a roundabout way, I think I was carrying on that tradition instinctively, without even knowing it. I explore that unspoken knowing in a piece I featured at Art Basel Switzerland in 2025.

How did you pick your medium?

I think my acrylic monotype collages chose me. It’s the medium I’m most known for, but I consider myself a conceptual artist first. It found me while I was caring for my father, who was ill. We painted together as therapy, and when he could no longer hold a brush, we started pressing paint into the canvas by hand on my mom’s kitchen table, using whatever household items we had. I saw it as therapy for him at first, but the works we made together grew into an homage to him. That work became three solo exhibitions, Future Memories I, Future Memories II, and A Matter of Time. I wanted to make memories with my father while he was still with us, knowing it was only a matter of time before he transitioned. That process became my signature style, and it’s an homage to him in more ways than one. His own father was a textile merchant in Haiti, so there’s something full circle about me telling stories now through handmade textiles of my own.

Who do you look up to?

Tim Davis is someone I look up to, a father figure for me since my dad passed. Tim died the week of my last birthday. He was one of the longest running gallery owners in DC and a phenomenal artist in his own right. We were both selected for the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program on an official state visit to Malawi, and we got close during that trip. We already knew we were both from Chicago, but we realized we’d lived less than ten minutes from each other and gone to the same high school twenty plus years apart. He was an educator, an artist, and a gallerist, and he was a real pillar in the community.

What are you currently working on or thinking about next?

I’m continuing to build out Like Water for Chocolate City, including recent pieces like Just Like Water II, and developing Routes Written in Earth toward a full set of seven works.

I also just wrapped Framing History: An Alvin Leon Durham Story, a documentary honoring Leon’s life and craft, which premiered in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard this past August. I served as associate producer on that project, working alongside director Conrad Woody. Leon has framed my work for the past seven years. He’s a military veteran who became a metro worker and then an art framer, and his work has hung in the White House and the State Department. He’s humble, precise, and carries himself with real dignity. He gets things done with a kind of military discipline, but what I admire most is his character, the way he treats people. I don’t try to imitate him so much as I hope to embody that same standard in how I move through the world.

Next, I’m preparing work for America: The Game, a group show curated by Jason Bowers and Brandon Hill in the pop-up space at Union Station, tied to the 250th anniversary of America and running alongside DC’s Art All Night. The show looks at competition and sport as a lens on American identity, race, class, wealth, and culture. It runs September 10 through October 10.

What questions or ideas are you most interested in exploring right now?

Right now I’m thinking a lot about what “Chocolate City” means beyond DC. My series Like Water for Chocolate City looks at how Port au Prince, Kingston, São Paulo, and Chicago are all Chocolate Cities in their own right, majority Black places bound by community, resilience, and possibility. Water and chocolate carry the metaphor: water for renewal, chocolate for the soil and the people, for culture’s richness and the sweetness born from struggle.

Alongside that, I’ve been working through Routes Written in Earth, a series built around the seven valleys from Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, Quest, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Bewilderment, and Annihilation. I’m using that structure to think about spiritual and creative searching.

Is there anyone you would like to thank?

Leon Durham has framed my work for the past seven years. He’s a military veteran who became a metro worker and then an art framer, and his work has hung in the White House and the State Department. He’s humble, precise, and carries himself with real dignity. He gets things done with a kind of military discipline, but what I admire most is his character, the way he treats people. I don’t try to imitate him so much as I hope to embody that same standard in how I move through the world.

I also want to thank Howard University, which has been my second home and a steady source of creative grounding, along with art dealer Anthony Roberts and the wider circle of Haitian artists and institutions I’ve been fortunate to work alongside.