Jasmine Clarke’s photography juxtaposes physical and dream worlds to explore family history, memory, and migration. This image is taken from the series Shadow of the Palm (2018), and features the artist’s 13 year old sister Olivia on a family trip to Senegal. In a sparsely decorated room Olivia sits on a bed, spread with a wrinkled sheet and a single pillow, as the sun pours in and illuminates her face. The expression she wears cannot be named, but demands an encounter, and her still dry bathing suit says that she dreams of swimming or, perhaps, has only just changed her mind. The image, imbued with freedom and vulnerability, cannot be considered apart from the kindred gaze on the other side of the lens, from the one who sees Olivia so clearly.

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.