Cry

cry, 2013

Presented during Art Basel Miami, 2013

cry assembles a dense constellation of images depicting Black men in states of grief, vulnerability, exhaustion, and emotional release. Created in 2013, the work confronts cultural expectations that often deny Black masculinity access to tenderness, fragility, and public mourning. Individual portraits accumulate into a collective emotional archive, shifting crying from a private act into a shared social and political language.

At the center, fragments of text evoke experiences of victimization, psychological distress, prohibition, and love, positioning vulnerability within broader structures that shape Black interior life. cry asks what becomes possible when Black men are permitted to be witnessed not simply through narratives of strength, endurance, or threat, but through the complexity of feeling itself.