As a queer Senegalese-American artist, I employ coded language and intentional opacity to protect and express identities often erased or criminalized. My work centers on The Maad Code, an alphabet I developed from the maad fruit to imagine a writing system independent of the Latin alphabet and rooted in ancestral memory. I withhold translations and ciphers, allowing meaning to remain held within the work rather than fully accessible to every viewer. My interdisciplinary practice treats language as both material and structure, with each piece functioning as an archive and vessel. Through fragmentation, ornament, and repetition, I construct layered meanings that express difference through texture, color, and form. My work articulates queer liberation through material hybridity, assemblage, and portraiture, honoring cultural inheritance while envisioning futures where queer identities are visible, protected, cherished, and free.
