You Can Always Count On My Love or Beauty of the Week (Philadelphia)

I essentially spent all of my twenties living in Philadelphia. In these very formative years of my life the city shaped me as both an artist and individual, not only through the opportunities I took on, but most importantly through the people I met. Beauty of the Week acts an ode to my time in Philadelphia, using the process of cyanotype to reimagine everyday Philadelphia women and femmes as Beauty of the Weeks as inspired by the iconic JET magazine segment. As I believe my connections and interactions with Black femmes have been defining points of my artistic relationship with Philadelphia, I collaborated with Black femme artists, cultural workers, and organizers to complicate Western understandings of the black female figure. Ultimately, Beauty of the Week seeks to confront current narratives about Black women’s interactions with publicness, visibility, beauty and agency, while archiving Black femme’s hopes for the future of Philadelphia. This work was then turned into a series of wheat-pasted posters featured across the city, in the neighborhoods the respective Beauties are from, accompanied with audio interviews from each of them. All prints and interviews are featured below.