Artist Residency at Glen Foerd Mansion

“Since the inception of our artist residency program in 2015, we have worked with 15 Philadelphia-based artists to create works that expand the interpretation of the historic Glen Foerd estate. Works from past residents have challenged dominant historical narratives by focusing on issues of wealth inequality, race, industrialization, and environmental conservation, among other contemporary social concerns. We prioritize work that is experimental in nature, engages new and diverse audiences, and will allow the artist an opportunity to advance their practice.” via Glen Foerd website

As the Artist in Residence at Glen Foerd, I plan to develop visual works that reimagine the lives of the enslaved and indentured servants who worked on the land and helped to create the estate as we know it. Through an interdisciplinary practice that focuses on unearthing histories of Black communities, I'm interested in visualizing a more comprehensive depiction that allows for speculative imaginings of the past. These will be dynamic revisionings of Glen Foerd as a space where Black people thoroughly enjoyed the leisure and decadence associated with the families that actually resided there. These archive-sourced compositions will also be reenacted on the grounds of the estate through several events and workshops open to the public. To frame these compositions I will restore and build frames in the same gilded style prevalent throughout the house in an effort to challenge viewers as to what's real and what is imagined. The wonderings of the laborer are what interested me most. Those thoughts that sustained them day in and day out while living in servitude. I would assume many of those thoughts would revolve around visions of living the lives of the people they served, enjoying the luxuries they maintained or maybe even some reckoning event that would change the circumstances entirely. Exposing this subtext through visual language, I ultimately aim to illustrate and live out the spirit of those laborers.