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My great uncle, the first person I know in my family to earn a doctoral degree, combined archival research with family stories to trace our heritage to 5 African indentured servants trafficked in 1629. From this, he wrote the genealogical text, “Tyler”: No Longer Undiscovered. The oldest ancestors he identified were women, but my uncle ignored this, and dedicated this book to an imagined “Patriarch” of our family.

Through autoethnography of my experience grappling with this book, and a creative and experiential method of producing an artistic product, I reflexively engage with questions of the past, genealogy, historiography, fugitive spaces, anti-Blackness, and its connection with gender (or more specifically misogynoir).

The result is an installation of a poster of my family tree obscured by a paper and photo collage made of images of body parts. My goal in creating this piece is to make the invisible visible, and counteract the white supremacist notions of “official histories” that devalue the struggles of the marginalized. The poster serves as a fugitive space and counter narrative to make visible those who are left obscured.

Creating this piece helps me grapple with the role of academia in erasing individuals, cultures, and whole knowledge systems from the larger society through weaponizing the ivory tower. I learn more about my genealogy while navigating how dominant historic memory continuously serves the white supremacist hegemony. The piece responds to and rejects the narrative of “great white men”, and how BIPOC scholars can still unintentionally serve the hegemony.