Na'imah's Lore
While creating, I get sent into a flow state that is both dazzling and dizzying. Mixed media allows me to relay, translate, decipher, and depict the swirls of experiences, observations, and theories that fill my mind. Creativity is a core value that intertwines into every aspect of my life. I create because I have to. I have to give my emotions, wandering mind, and electric energy an outlet that is both expressive and therapeutic. I have to unleash my voice, narrative, and perspective as a Black gay woman. And I have to follow my curiosity as an ever-learning student of the universe. My mission is to make a positive impact by creating work that is thought provoking and moving.
My work often explores themes of trauma, relationships, oppression, and healing. I was raised in a challenging environment marked by instability and isolation. This experience instilled in me the importance of community as a source of support, connection, and growth.These bonds reshaped my understanding of love and human connection. I aim to create art that envisions a future, an Afrofuturist, Indigenous, and 2SLGBTQ+ utopia, where we’ve reconciled with our past and worked to decolonize our future. The following works reflect these themes, along with the thought processes and inspiration that informed them.
Scultptures
This work titled “The Reach” tells a personal story of my battle with mental health which is one many can relate. Puzzle pieces are both a medium and a message. I used this material to express my confusion and doubt in a time I would say I was both lost and stuck. As a black woman I was taught to exemplify strength, which meant not asking for help as I thought it to be a sign of weakness. Weak, distressed and disoriented is how I felt during my deep depression so much so that I had suicidal thoughts. The gesture of the hand is me reaching out for help in a time where I felt I was drowning. It depicts the split minute where I could either drown or be saved. Thankfully I was saved.
Na’imah Friday, The Reach, Mixed Media, 2023
We need to start with a micro level to disseminate oppression on a macro level. In this work “web of oppression” I aim to create a visual representation of oppression. I believe that if we help people to visualise an issue we can work collaboratively to dismantle it.This artwork responds to Audre Lorde’s text There Is No Hierarchy In Oppression. Our state of humanity exists in an interconnected web comprising “Five Faces of Oppression”—exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural domination, and violence (Young). I chose to depict oppression with a complex web of connections that are not easily detangled and given the intersectionality of oppression, which refers to people who belong to multiple groups of oppression. My intention is to leave the viewer questioning how? How can this interconnected oppression web be disconnected?
Na’imah Friday, Mixed Media, Web of Oppression, 2023
The work “Parliament” is an anthropomorphized rock meaning I created an object by imparting human qualities to it. The soft, droopy rock represents the possibility of political change where even the hardest of material can alter its form. The viewer can interpret the rock as an old white male political figure who is stuck in existing systems and structures, considered oppressive or hierarchical. By giving the rock an appearance of transformation my hope is to illustrate how we can make strategic use of existing systems to achieve decolonized, anti-racist and anti-disposability social, political, or cultural goals.
Na’imah Friday, Parliament, Mixed Media, 2023
Writings
Thornes Wrapped In Silk
You trust your instinct that has been screaming inside of you to get out. Run to the nearest patch of cool wet grass to feel it beneath your bare feet and knowing that you made it to safety. Heart once racing now calming. Breath softening knowing you have space for peace. I felt the duality of liberation and sadness from leaving the only thing I’ve known.
When I wrote this poem I thought of two moments in my life: when I left home and when I broke up with my toxic partner at the time. Each of those moments I was choosing the inconvenient option but listening to my intuition.
When I left home I was 18. To put it nicely, my mother presented me with the option to leave. And I left; moving to my university town with roommates and never looking back. Growing up, there was a lot of uncertainty.
To me, it felt like love was a tool used as a currency paid for good behaviour. Sacrificing my needs to make her happy. Presenting like the good daughter, the quiet one, never causing trouble, always doing what she's told, being the responsible big sister, managing mothers emotions to be loved. I was taught that love came with conditions.
The final straw was when my mother was upset at me for a situation she caused but blamed me for despite my best efforts to avoid the situation years earlier. I couldn’t take abuse anymore.
Maybe that played a part in how I saw romantic relationships.
With my toxic partner, they were my first relationship, I didn’t have a measure for what was healthy. The over-possessiveness, the conflict, the cheating, the lack of privacy…
I mistook their control for love.
I should have left when I found out he hurt an innocent animal out of revenge.
I should have left when I found him in bed with another person.
I should have left when I found out he cheated on me with the roommate he told me not to worry about.
But I stayed because I thought that's what I deserve that's what I was worth
In all these situations, I felt like I was escaping a burning building.
When I left my mother’s house, I discovered unconditional love. Not from some romantic partner, but from my close group of friends that I met in university.
And when I did finally leave that toxic relationship I had timed it with my move so he didn’t know my new address. It took only three days before he stopped trying to contact me. But I cried for weeks. I fell into a depression where the only time I went outside was when my roommate would come home to take me for walks. I was mourning what I thought would be the only love I would have the chance of encountering.
That relationship revealed so many things that had nothing to do with them that I wanted to work on for myself, leading me to my healing journey, where I focused on my self-worth and healing my inner child.
I started writing notes on my wall, just little reminders of things I needed to hear. The one I still repeat to myself is what I do is enough, where I am is enough, I am enough.
I ran out of the burning building but I still played with fire. The flames I saw in my mother and the toxic one I saw in others I met along my journey but I knew how to handle myself. I know that they will not hold power over my energy anymore.
When you are stepping out you step into infinite possibility because you have decided to live in a universe where you choose to listen to your inner being.
You begin to flow with your instinctive rhythms.
