Michèle Pearson Clarke’s photography, film, and installation practice explores longing and loss, and the possibilities therein. In the series The Animal Seems to be Moving (2018-ongoing), from which this photograph is taken, Clarke uses self-portraiture infused with humour and absurdity to name and refuse assumptions about her Black, queer masculine body as she ages. Here, the artist stands before us with an afro pick secured by a strip of hot pink tape to her characteristically shaven head. The image conveys a playful gesture of a daughter imitating the stylings of her father in 1970s Trinidad, while also interrogating the prescriptive nature of girlhood, often incompatible with the queer childhood many desire and create, continuously, in defiance.

This work is presented as a part of There are no parts, an exhibition curated by Letticia Cosbert Miller that brings together artists Nydia Blas, Widline Cadet, Jasmine Clarke, and Michèle Pearson Clarke, who each explore the complexity of Black girlhood through photography.

Here, girlhood is understood not merely as a temporal encounter, but as a framework through which we, regardless of age and gender, are able to engage with the meanings and lives of Black girls. Girlhood is a liberatory and creative space in which one is continually being and becoming, acquiring knowledge of self, and seeking practical ways of coping with and resisting cultural constraints and expectations. From the mundane to the magnificent, Black girls are responding to representations of and attitudes towards class, gender, race, ability, and sexuality. This exhibition displays those responses–the devices, gestures, and embellishments by which Black girls manifest their ideas and create their own, new images of self.