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About Afr0delic🌀

The moniker, Afr0delic, is inspired by the soul-expanding sound and energy of Parliament-Funkadelic. Not exclusively afrofuturism, my work seeks to highlight the connection between the black, gender-fluid, and psychedelic lens, blending future and past into a “Cosmic Slop” of the eternal Now. My work is an afr0naut exploration, journeying across dimensions of painting, 2D animation, sculpture, digital graphic design, poetry, collage, djing, and more.

As a first generation immigrant descended from rastas, artists, and herbalists, I am also highly influenced by Jamaican and African spirituality. As a Baltimore inhabitant since childhood, the magic of nature (human, and non-human), the magic of blackness, and the various ways they intersect and manifest in my everyday world are major sources of inspiration for my art. I frequently explore themes of animism (the belief that all things in existence hold energy and life) authenticity, freedom, sensitivity, and love (of the Creator, the Earth, the Universe, the Self), as well as how my never-ending road of personal growth and healing always brings me back to these principles.

The painting technique I use the most frequently utilizes spiralized brushstrokes. This is the visual language I've chosen to use to symbolize a universal code, a mystically interdependent life force I witness weaving together everything in existence, from the largest creations like galaxies to the smallest ones like DNA strands. In an animist perspective, everything, even space itself—swirls with spirit.

Living in the “US” as a displaced dark being who has never felt fully at home within this “nation,” I needed art to affirm the fact that my body is indigenous to this planet as a whole. By connecting with the natural elements near to me and noticing plant-human hybridity, I began to establish a sense of belonging and home. With hidden (stolen) links in my history, I began to recognize the trees, and the sun itself, as family.

In a hyper-individualized, materialistic, and emotionally numb society, my art seeks to reactivate ancient connections to our inner and outer worlds. I often depict the trees, the mind, hair, the heart, and other subjects, imbedding them with identifiable human features, such as hands, arms, or eyes as a visual metaphor for consciousness, in an effort to encourage an expansion of empathy and more thoughtful interactions with whatever is being depicted, as well as promote reflection and application of the lessons exemplified in nature’s processes to one’s own life.

I see art as a powerful alchemical force that, when imbued with focused intention, is potent enough to transform minds, bodies, and souls—for both the viewers and the artists themselves.

“Free your mind and your ass will follow”- George Clinton, Funkadelic