Artist Statement

I begin with self.

To create, I must first witness how I move through the world—and the many worlds that move through me. My practice begins in reflection: of where I’ve been, where I’ve arrived, and the unseen lines connecting them. Through photographs, sounds, and words, I document the quiet force of life unfolding—traces of resistance carved into the everyday.

I am drawn to vibrant scenes and familiar gestures that pulse with memory: laundry swaying in wind, people gathering at the edge of a stoop, the sacred rhythm of rest. These are not just moments—they are declarations. In the midst of structural erasure, beauty remains. These textures of daily life speak back to displacement, patriarchy, and the many "-isms" stitched into space and time. I study how people carve out presence—how they make room for themselves and each other, in defiance of systems designed to render them invisible.

Feminine and Black by nature, I create from a body that is always read. I carry the intersection of gender, race, and class with me. My work doesn’t only ask to be seen—it asks to be felt. Through it, I reimagine collisions of past and present, conjuring lush inner worlds that are rarely afforded political significance but are, in truth, deeply revolutionary.

Autobiographical by necessity, my work becomes a map: of how I’ve known, how I’ve been known, and how I resist being defined. My archive is a soft site of knowledge—a place where I piece together moral pathways and spiritual coordinates, where I reflect the times my existence has been politicized, and reclaim those moments as sources of power.

With each image, each sound, each word—I expand my understanding of self, of space, of time. My work offers no final answers, only openings. A tender offering of what I’ve found so far.

Victoria Anne Jean-François