As Black women, the search for home is often fraught with difficulty. The communities we exist in consistently look past us. Rendering us invisible, in history and thus the future. This memory practice is an act of reclamation––an exploration, a salve made to reconfigure the people, memories, narratives, and artifacts left behind. Through the excavation and reassembly of memories, familial accounts, photos and historical documents, this work reinterprets the stories of the women of Valentine and Carter-Rankin’s lineage. These are the women who built homes within themselves.

In line with the Black Radical Tradition of preservation and collection, the artists archive the lives of their family hailing from Milwaukee, Chicago, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Alexandria Valentine (b. 1996) is a South Side Chicago born artist. Their practice engages the archive, writing, collage and photography to explore Black Latent thought, ancestral landscapes and the Black Romantic. Valentine’s excavation of the archive serves…