Standing beneath the glass of the Grand Palais in Paris, I’m reflecting on the lineage that made me, Black and queer visibility, and the radical act of placing Black women at the center of art history. My work has always been in conversation with the canon—reframing portraiture, interiors, and abstraction through rhinestones, pattern, scale, and gaze—to insist that our stories, our bodies, and our beauty are not marginal, but monumental. To be the first African-American artist to exhibit at the Grand Palais is a deeply historic and humbling moment. This space has long symbolized cultural authority, yet so many important voices have been absent from inside these walls. My practice challenges that absence, drawing from art history and popular culture to build a new visual language rooted in Black feminism, pleasure, desire, and self-determination. This exhibition is for my mother, my first muse and all of the women who have inspired me, the artists who paved the way for me , and the ge...