Unnatural, This Step (2020)

In research, I examine the cross-border relationship between the Black communities of Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan during the International Miss Sepia Contests held from the 1930s to the 1950s as part of the Emancipation Parade and Freedom Celebrations of Windsor. I’ve understood the term sepia in its objective capacities; themed photo booths at amusement parks—using costumes and sepia tones to transport middle-class families into quaint western saloons. I never liked them. Or my childhood understanding of a ghost, something fleeting, brown, and murky. (Similar to the experience of marginalized bodies, which only ever exist in our collective periphery vision). Sepia had never existed in my body in this way. As a Woman of Colour and as Women of Colour, where do we find autonomy in the language of our difference? The series Unnatural, This Step is a collection of manipulated Polaroid photography, found objects, and natural material: an abstracted documentation of trophies and crowns, the racialized borderlands between Canada and the United States as they remain, a nod to my internal trepidation in owning (and understanding) my sepia body. Remember: a pageant created for and by sepia bodies (Black Excellence) is an exceptionally well-dressed protest; a copper-hued wave to the judges, the crowd…a poltergeist salute to our continued search for freedom.