Empowerment & The True Black Crown

'Empowerment' and 'The True Black Crown' are part of I AM SUGAR (2018), a series of digital photographs responding to Stuart Hall’s Old and New Ethnicities essay of 1991. In this essay, Hall states that “I am the sugar in the bottom of the English cup of tea”. These images situate a Black hand rising from a quintessentially English tea cup, designed in England, made in China and sold via Amazon. The work examines how the Atlantic is viewed from Britain and the United States and vice versa, recalling the individuals that shaped both the British Empire and the descendants of enslaved Africans, wherever they may be in the diaspora.