Chuma Adam

I Don't Know What It Is Like To Not Have Deep Emotions. Even When I Feel Nothing, I Feel It Completely 

This body of work aims to imagine a world where I can exist as a soft, sensual, and vulnerable woman who invites healing and love of oneself and others through beginning to define what Blackness is and what it means to the personal. This world-making exists in the making of the work where being self-aware is rewarded with attentive tenderness, healing, learning, loving, and the remaking of myself. Through this work and materiality, I am able to indulge in myself by forming myself in the image of my highest self through the quest of reclaiming, and defining what Blackness in womanhood, and femininity means to me.

In I Don’t Know What It Is Like To Not Have Deep Emotions. Even When I Feel Nothing, I Feel It Completely (2023), I am beginning to think of Blackness as “an innate realm within myself that possesses a love and care that is unconditional, and that is like no other force or being that I have ever encountered. Blackness is like a mirror, a reflection of myself that takes care of me, makes love to me, sews me together, and heals me in a way that is attentive and particular to my being. My Blackness is self-serving so long as I reciprocate this attentiveness, care, dedication, and love. Therefore, in retrospect, my Blackness cares for me because I care for Blackness. I can define myself, relearn, and remake myself because I am trying to, and able to redefine what Blackness is.” (Adam, 2023)