Gatekeepers Series

by Komikka Patton

Drawing on Afrofuturist themes, my motifs relate to Black motherhood and motherships. Using drawing, printmaking, and collage gives the opportunity to tap into the world of the fictional, surreal, mythical, and spiritual. The archetypes in the work came from a street market on a trip to South Africa and their births ignited questions of my ancestry, self, having a single black mom, my fear of motherhood, and my own mortality. The drawings speak to the forward motion of possibility for Black women and invite the audience to arrive at many possibilities of a future through all pathways, even the possibility of simply existing. Healing through Afrofuturistic Possibility, Time-Travel, Quantum Physics, and Hope.

Part African Queens part cyborgs, each collage belongs to no one time or place. This mash-up of traditional and futuristic allows Black women to not only exist in the future as more than what they were allowed to be in the past but also allows the Black women to world build.

Komikka Patton is a 2D media artist based in New York City. She uses ballpoint pen, ink, paper, and assorted printmaking techniques to create works that are centrally based on the African Diasporan human condition. She is the winner of a Darryl Chappell Foundation Grant, NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Finalist, and the May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Scholarship. She has obtained her BFA in Fine Arts from Columbus College of Art & Design and an MFA from New York University.