Growing up in Chicago in mostly depressed areas, the landscape felt oddly dystopian, even before I knew what the word meant. As a kid, my friends and me created otherworldly costumes and built a sort of utopia in the rooms and floors of dilapidated abandoned buildings from scraps and wreckage found in the vast number of debris filled lots. Against the backdrop of black oppression, policing, and poverty, it was as if we knew that creating mythical images of our black selves affirmed our human status. These experiences left a lasting impression on how I view the world. My work combines vintage and current fragments of black people to explore themes of existentialism, myth, and belonging.