Jina Valentine

Formally, my practice deals with alternative readings of text: what logic exists within the illogic of aphasics or amongst an aporetic oversaturation of meaning? I détourne literary devices. I illustrate incompatibilities between content and substrate. The socio-critical element is inspired by my son and his perennially posed why? And by what in Art Brut is described as un claque--an event that shakes one awake, opens up new possibilities for perceiving the world. As events unfolding in local politics compel me to (re)act, I find myself having to distill things like white supremacy into 4-year-old terms. Such distillation or translation requires reexamination of the factors determining my own socio-political positionality. I do not have definitive answers for his oft-posed why’s or what is’, though I’d say I am experiencing un claque: it is a pulsion demanding my recalibration of meanings a priori, and my position in the world as a single, black mother.