Love Letter to My Bass Guitar Here I am standing in front of you wishing my fingers could move faster across your fretboard. Wishing my fingers fit more comfortably on the edge of this pickup. I swear you've been a part of me since that time I found that the roundest sounds echo through the chest as if we are both instruments. I had not the space for you then, so I tucked your name away. Held it quiet until the day I saw you and could no longer deny. These days my fingers smell like metal strings and machine heads. And I smile ‘cause I ain't ever known an art like this. I’m not all too good at an art like this. But I smile because my first love was the sea as deep as these bass tones. They seem confused when they see this Muslim girl with a guitar strapped to her back. As if they expected me to go quietly through this world they’ve built. As if they expect me to leave my vocal cords and bass amp on mute. But nah, we turn up and shout the names of everyone we've lost. I think of Breonna when I strum a B note. 2nd fret on the A string. First chord of my heart for we are both instruments. For they are a part of me and you are a part of me and we do not forget. Your name, their names, and this life it's taught me that the sin I've known ain't even sin. That there is no paradox in a black Muslim girl with a bass, a pen, clay, and acrylics. These frets are made for ink stained hands, hands in prayer, hands in salute. Don’t shoot. I believe in God, memorial, and music. Power, blackness, and worship and this be protest. Here I am playing songs of revolution on you, a blue bass named Ocean. Reflecting on sound and sea waves. Counting tempos, counting names. One, two, three, four. Emmett, John, Breonna, George. I wish for a world in which they are still breathing. I wish for a world in which my love for you and skill are the same. I wish for a world in which people walk fully aware of their own heartbeats. Knowing that we are all instruments.

As a kid when I was asked about my inspiration I would always say “I’m inspired by the world and the rhythmic ways humans move through it.” I stopped saying that after I noticed that blank stares were all most people offered in reply. But that answer is still the truest and simplest way I know to define my inspiration. If not that then I’d have to list a host of things that would take far too long to be worth anyone’s time. I’d say, the sky, my family, bird song, justice, injustice, black skin and how it reflects the light, ocean waves, cool water, summer, sun, music, protest, revolution, clay, silver, stone, the sounds of words, hands, smiles, and my list still wouldn’t be done. The everyday world around me isn’t part of what inspires me but my sole inspiration. I have a fundamental belief that the world and everything in it, including people, jokes, and dirt are art. I believe that everything is beautiful and my best attempts to mimic it can’t ever match up. Can’t in the best way. I function less as an artist and more as a faulty mirror attempting to reflect all the beauty I see around me. And when I see bad, ugly, or cruel things I reflect those too. I depict and condemn them. I name them and imagine the world in which they are no longer a reality. I do this as protest, as reclamation, in recognition, as celebration, and in remembrance. The beauty of life and how it's lived is what inspires me every day and my work reflects that.

I love art, poetry, and creating more than I know how to express. I am in love and obsessed with the process of building beautiful things with my own two hands and this is my passion. When I say I love art it often confuses people because the term is so broad but that’s just because my love is truly that broad. I am passionate about a wide variety of art forms and learning them, knowing them, using them, has had a huge impact on my life. Over the years I’ve learned printmaking, painting, paper making, ceramics, drawing, sculpture, writing, and more. The impact these art forms, this passion for art, has had in my life is profound. My love for writing and poetry has motivated me to work and refine my art until I was named the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, MD. Through this title, I was paid to perform all over the DMV area, featured in the Bethesda Magazine, and even performed poetry at Duke University. My love of printmaking inspired me to begin a mailing campaign in 2020 to protest George Floyd’s murder. I hand-printed over 700 postcards and Americans all over the country sent them to politicians and police departments. My passion for ceramics earned me an award for Academic Excellence in Ceramics from Montgomery College in the spring of this year, 2022. My passion has changed my life because it has shown me that I am powerful. It proved to me that no matter what the world said this Black Hijabi with big eyes and strong hands can impact the world for the better. As a young minority growing up I didn’t always believe that. I saw the myriad injustices in the world and despaired because I didn’t see anyone changing them. Art, my passion, showed me that I could change them myself and that there were artist-activists across the world, who were striving to do the same. My passion hasn’t simply changed my life. It is my life. I use it in every aspect of how I live. It is my advocacy, it is my joy, it is my therapy, and my relief, it is my child and my best friend, it is my happy place, it is my home. When asked who I am I most often say, artist and this is proof of what my passion means to me. I am passionate about art, which is to say I dream of new worlds every night. I am an artist, which is to say I wake each day and set to work crafting the worlds I dreamed of. My passion is art and it has allowed me to become who I am.

A Man Was Lynched Yesterday is a 100-year-old civil rights saying that was used to express the gravity of the issue of lynching in America. When the phrase was first popularized it was true every single day. I began working with this phrase in May of 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. I used it because I realized that today it is still true far too often. I printed it onto postcards as a form of protest and allowed people to order them and send them to friends, politicians, and police departments. The project became a mailing campaign that reached across America and yielded over 700 hand-printed cards. Since 2021 I have slowed my work on this project but have not let this phrase and its meaning die. This piece, A Man Was is a reexamination of the message, pain, history, conviction, anger, and demand for change that I carried with me through months of printing this phrase over 700 times. A Man Was is a large-scale replica of the postcards I sent out in 2020. It uses the powerful phrase over a pattern of white monkey wrenches, Freedom quilt patterns that mean "collect your tools", as a way to call people to action. It is a call back to 2020 and the direct impact my work had. It is also a call back to 1920 and in this way, indirectly fosters conversations of social justice and advocacy for Black lives. A Man Was is a demonstration of my commitment to the cause and a promise, from me to myself, that I will return to my work and always fight for justice. This piece, this project, and others like them are how I plan to help my community and change the world.

The biggest influence in my life is, and may always be, my mother. They say I’m just like her. Same face, same build, same stern, same smile. She was my first teacher, my biggest artistic supporter, my closest confidant, and my first and last resort. She is the reason I have been able to continuously occupy artistic spaces and learn the skills I need to grow. And of course, by virtue of being a mother, she has impacted who I am, how I think, what I believe, and whom I aspire to be. She has influenced all the best parts of me, and I find myself quoting her often when I speak of the art I make and why. The lessons she’s taught me continue to benefit my work, my life, and my academic career. When I graduate, I hope to use the skills she taught me along with the artistic skills I’ve learned in school. My dream is to pursue an artistic career as a practicing artist and art educator. My skills will show up in obvious ways in the work I create, the skill it takes to create it, and how I discuss what I’ve created. I also plan to use the more subtle and abstract parts of my artistic training in everything I do. Skills, such as approaching problems with creative solutions, translating words and emotions into visual elements, patience, and precision will help me communicate with students, plan engaging learning experiences, and excel as an educator. These skills will also enable me to plan innovative approaches to advocate for the social justice that I am passionate about and constantly striving toward. I believe that artists are some of the most powerful people in any given society with our sway over public opinion, our wide range of skills, and our ability to touch people’s hearts with our work. Utilizing these skills is how I plan to be innovative. My artistic skill is different because I come from a unique background and have a very specific perspective. My identity is intersectional as I am black American, Panamanian, Muslim, and a woman. My experiences in the world are specific and make for unique art that focuses on common issues in a nuanced way. My subject matter and method of problem-solving are one of a kind. In addition to having a unique perspective, my approach to making artwork is another strength. I work in a wide variety of materials, and this makes me able to apply principles and ideas across media. Principles and motifs from quilt making are applied in my paintings and mark-making techniques from drawing are applied in my printed work. In this way, my skill and work are different and special.

My little sister is four years old, she’ll be five in October, and I think about what that means. I think about what it means to grow up as a young, Black, Muslim, girl in this world. As a kid I grew up in spaces that did not know, understand, or want to know anything about my identity. I was asked rude questions, laughed at, and sometimes openly slandered. My name, my face, my skin, and my faith were all unfamiliar and unworthy to the kids I interacted with every day. Their tiny worldview became my problem when my identity forced them to think outside of themselves and they made me pay for it. Now I’m 19, an artist, a poet, a bassist with strong hands and I have a little sister. I know who I am but she, as I did, may have a hard time learning about herself. So, the impact I want my art to have is simple. I want to, through loving depictions, narratives, authentic stories, and images, increase the visibility of people like us and maybe, just maybe, make growing up easier for someone. I plan to tell the stories of my people, Black, Muslim, American people, and in doing so make us known. Make us seen, show the injustices we’ve faced, all that we’ve overcome, the music we’ve made, the love we’ve brought, show that our story is America. I plan to make it so that little kids like my four-year-old sister can see themselves in the art they consume and know themselves as well. So that when someone asks them who they are with pointing hand and twisted mouth, my sister and kids like her can point to my canvas and say “I am that. I am Black, this is me.” I want my art to serve as a mirror to my people and all the kids who come after me. Something to show the most beautiful parts of us and serve as a constant reminder that we are, in fact, beautiful. So maybe, the only positive impact I truly desire is for a Black, Muslim kid to look up at something I’ve made and smile. I plan to do that by creating, refining, learning and growing, by going to Howard University and becoming the artist that can enact change.