Sukari
_____Jacquard woven fabric, felted wool, paint
43.5” x 68”
(109.22 cm x 172.72 cm)
2021
Sukari is one of five pieces from a body of works called “Not Yet Uhuru” in reference to the Uhuru Movement, a socialist African internationalist movement led by the African People’s Socialist Party. The basis of this movement is historical materialism, a theory whose driving concept is that late capitalism is actually a hyper-developed version of imperialism. To illustrate this idea, these pieces shift the viewer from the objects and locations that are time-consuming to the meaning of consumption itself. The goods depicted, such as agriculture fields, pineapples, and sugar, demand a production lineage which touches many histories to bring sweetness to the contemporary world. The word for “sugar” is largely similar across languages, yet consumers live in vastly differing proximities from the product’s origin.
