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Jaleesa: Maybe it’s that they’re too contained or now too literal of the body. Before, I was really having fun with drawings of my body and then playing with abstraction and how the body can flow in between that, and now I feel like it’s maybe too literal. They’re a pain in my butt right now, so I’m trying to figure out what to do with them.

manuel: Does a kind of over-simplified reception of the work have anything to do with that?

J: Possibly.

m: Sounds a little bit like you’re blaming the work fully when it should only be partly, right, because the audience and their consumption and their reification of the dehumanization of the Black woman’s body has a lot to do with it. I’m sorry you have to deal with that, and it limits or pushes on your work in this really violent way. I think that stuff is really, really good. The kind of explorations of sculptural assemblage through body gesture, I think its awesome. I love it.

J: Thank you. Yeah, I actually hadn’t thought about if the way its being received, the way its being shown, the way its being talked about — how that affects my relationship to what’s happening.

m: Do you prefer to just avoid thinking about that stuff?

J: You know, I would probably say yeah. I would love to just be an artist and not have to do a lot of other jobs. I feel like maybe I somehow have to come to peace, or make peace with these spaces and audiences that I have to show with.

m: For survival.

J: Because currently, as the system is right now, that’s really one of the few avenues that I have to be able to just make my work. And so part of me is worried, if I overthink it, then what will that mean. Should I change something, should I not show anymore? Should I just make work and not put it out into the world then until the system somehow shifts or changes that allows for my work to just be what it is, and not have to mold it, or question it, too much?