Gathering people in my home is central to my practice. In the places I've lived, I've gathered Black queer and trans people to build spaces for belonging, refuge, recognition, and collective care. These gatherings strengthen relationships among people who may share experiences and values, offering room to connect without an outside gaze or the expectation of having to explain ourselves to those with relative privilege. 

I am both the maker of the spaces and objects within them, and the person who gathers people there. Through furniture, domestic objects, and built environments, I explore how our surroundings shape the ways we come together and build relationships. 

Extending an invitation is a way of building networks of chosen family and community, but it also raises questions about access, intimacy, and protection. Who is welcome, and what allows people to feel at ease enough to be vulnerable and fully themselves? What happens when people outside these communities are invited to encounter spaces whose value partly comes from being free of an outside gaze? 

Rather than opening these intimate spaces to public access, I'm interested in how to share their necessity, joy, and possibility without reproducing the scrutiny they offer refuge from. I approach exhibition as a way of extending that invitation through the objects themselves. Furniture and domestic objects become stand-ins for the gatherings they held: lived-in, lived-with objects shaped by the relationships, care, and experiences that took place around them. They offer a way to encounter the traces of these spaces without requiring the people who made them meaningful to become objects of observation.