“It offers you no exit, this black life hung in the shape of a window,

Here: pretend the edges are metal

and everything in gold—medals.

This arrowed work of foil and fleece,

Sharpie, vinyl, and thread weaves cathedrals of inquiry

the debt of our identity

our inherited

structural constraint

the boundary of being bordered, the memory trapped in resin:

‘memba that time on Bruce Hill Blvd when we fast-forwarded and

rewinded at the same time, felt like we were trapped in a frame,

our teeth chandeliers in slow collision, our fathers loose leaf paper?

—Poem by Laura Neal

Stephanie J. Woods

Bruce Hill BLVD, 2020

Family photo transferred onto hand-cut and sewn quilt top, textile foil, heat transfer vinyl, Sharpie, textile paint, and polished furniture vinyl, 5.5” x 7.5” 



ABOUT THE ARTIST

Woods is critically engaged with black performativity, creating with careful and dangerous skill what may be discovered as the ‘Black Venn Diagram.’ The incomprehensible and overlapping relationship between truth and contradiction, between inheritance and advancement, and the impossible labor of black narrative and transparency.