Based on the poem “ Sadie and Maud” by Gwendolyn Brooks, this piece is the meeting of the two siblings. Maud who chooses the straight and narrow of going to college getting a job and living a socially “respectable” life that ultimately leaves her alone in the end. Sadie, “the livliest chit” extracted everything life had to offer. Having babies out of wedlock, being outspoken, donning the burden of being the family’s black sheep, she may have died young but she died with a life of little regret. Though I am most definitely Maud, I see myself in both. Ive walked the path that I am “supposed to” and it has led me to a loniness that has left me speechless. I have also led a life that has exsisted beyond the box I was supposed to stay in and have tried my best to scrape life with a fine tooth comb. Through photo, film, ans installation, this is the process of meeting myself.
Boi Like Me is an multidisciplinary excerpt from my ongoing film “ Sermon for a Watermelon Seed.” This exhibition centers my experience working through my relationship to my body and gesture in regards to transitioning and what it means to be a “man*” through the lens of my adolescence.