The Reconciliation / What’s More American Than Vanilla Ice Cream, 2024-2025

36 × 44 ″ Framed: 52 × 60 × 4 ″ Embroidery on archival pigment print

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A portrait of my older sister, Nique, wearing our sister’s red gown.

While the piece speaks to ice cream and its place in Black American cuisine, it carries multiple layers of messaging.

For the backdrop, I merged a 17th-century oil painting of a beach (will share title once I locate it again), and a Library of Congress archival image from 1959, depicting white men and women protesting school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas. The demonstrators, seen screaming and waving American flags like pitchforks, resisted the integration of schools by the Little Rock Nine.

The beach scene, a nod to Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde who both wrote about their experience with vanilla ice cream, the 4th of July and Jim Crow. The piece exposes a recurring pattern in America, where Black Americans have been instrumental in creating cultural staples while also being denied full access to it and excluded from recognition (i.e James Hemings, a Black chef trained in France while enslaved by Jefferson, who introduced early versions of vanilla ice cream to America, and Augustus Jackson, a 19th-century Black chef, revolutionized its production. Yet, despite their contributions, their names have been largely omitted from mainstream narratives.)

The photograph is hand-stitched with stark white stars onto her gown, symbolizing a nation unraveling at its seams. Where many still cling to the ideals of their forebears, others push forward with hopes of building a future rebuilt on belonging and equality.