When I saw crucifixion coffee table by Herbert Singleton, the first thing I thought of, of course, was Jesus. And I thought of how Jesus is portrayed across the world. Even though in the Bible it says Jesus had wooly hair, usually he is portrayed as somebody who would not have wooly hair. He is portrayed as white, but I love the fact that they got Jesus right. Or the artist got Jesus right, of course, in this piece.The other things that I noticed about this piece were just some of the contexts that speak to voodoo and the mix of voodoo and Christianity. I see a lot of fear in people’s eyes around what’s happening to their brother. And also I see a lot of inflicted pain from the black community. You see one man is actually stabbing him while he’s on the cross, which I think is a representation of the inflicted pain that we have in ourselves and the pain we inflict on each other.

When I saw this piece, it also reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in a household where my mom was Christian. She believed in Christianity and my dad practiced voodoo. There was a room in the basement. That was my dad’s voodoo room. That is where he would just have different practices. And I don’t know a lot about voodoo. I actually went the more Christian route in my family and just recently became spiritual. So I’m spiritual with an emphasis on African spirituality and with an emphasis on God. God, as I see God and feel God to be.

So this reminded me a lot of my childhood because the intersection between voodoo and Christianity is something that I grew up with and something that I’m very much interested in. And so the piece I created is an ode to my childhood. I talk about some of the themes that were going on in my household, but I also talk about Christianity and then voodoo as well. And so, those are all pieces that I decided to add in my video. I’m a mental health advocate. So I added mental health in there as well because mental illness was a thing that was also very prominent in my home. So you have all these different pieces in this piece that really remind me of my family life. And also, you have all these pieces that really remind me the things that I consistently preach about, which are black liberation, systematic oppression, crab in a barrel syndrome, and then black Jesus.