Lacee Xandria Hillard


Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts

All of these pieces are considered poetry. The choice to label all poetry comes from a selfhood that is married to the idea of autonomy and the further pushing for acceptance, I say it is and therefore it is because I reserve the right to name myself and my creations. I am a poet by birth and by chosen identity; my hands move to make and the making is a concentrated social experience presented as various experiments with materials and further onto the audience. I seek to provoke conversations around stories of life and acceptance of self as well as rejections of self however they may come through the bodies of the viewer via the viewing of my work or the hearing of my works.

I have learned to use the darkest spaces of my mind to my advantage, throwing information into this void that echos back poetry. I am a messenger. I heal through unlearning and relearning as long as I remember to write down what is echoed back. This is then used to echo to the world, to create poetry in many forms…writing, painting, sculpture, to play on the social happening of the era in which I live; this vibrates off of the individual stories brought tot he works from viewers who are made to observe and question. There is no right answer to my work except that it is poetry and I feels right.