Die When I Dream [of]

“We very sorry to be parted from one ’nother… Derefore we cry. Our grief so heavy... I think maybe I die in my sleep when I dream about mama.”

––Oluale Kossola (Cudjo Lewis) on the pain of being abducted and trafficked to the United States on a slave ship at age 19. Stated during his interview with Author Zora Neale Hurston, 1930, around age 90. 

This is the statement posted outside the solo exhibition “Die When I Dream [of]” which took place at Home Gallery ( 291 Grand Street) August-September 2022:

The United States was founded on dead dreams. 22,000,000 people forced to die, enslaved or murdered, their aspirations and loves converted to flickering nightmares at the edge of vigilant sleep. Yet, these lives are often excluded from the national foundation story, which has taken on a mythological quality. Especially for White Christian Nationalists (WCN), the “founding fathers” of the United States are conflated with the “founding fathers” of Christianity, acquiring a near-divine status. Today, this patristic patriarchy–– that is, the WCN mobilization of the foundational conflation— perpetuates violent terrorist acts. From mass shootings to the racist and gynophobic motivations behind abortion restriction to support of government and police murder, the WCN faction returns, again and again, to the nation’s foundational documents as justification for their violence and violation of human rights.  Primarily, they turn to the constitution as the “bible of the state,” imbuing this temporary document with religious authority. 

Die When I Dream [of] is a response, a shrine, an imaginary of an alternative to the domination of WCN in the United States. It is dedicated to Oluale Kossola and the diasporas and indigenous peoples who founded the United States through their labor, their pain, and their lives. Inverting the language of patristic patriotism to present the real founders of the United States— the majority American, the enslaved, the disenfranchised— I dream of an alternative history in this space. Here, foundational figures— early presidents— give their hands, severed of their original, valorizing portrait context, as offerings and as an apology for their crimes. The central icon of Oluale Kossola is a patriotic offering and a suggestion for a new historical direction. 

The title Die When I Dream [of] refers to Oluale Kossola’s statement of grief and separation, but his cry resonates across time in this nation. It speaks to the “American Dream” and to all of the last gasping cries for “mama” that contradict an oft told conservative narrative of hard work equating accessibility and freedom. Yet, I still believe in a fundamental, foundational dream. I believe that we have the right to dream without dying. But today, most people can’t dream. In sleep, loving faces kill them with pain: brothers or sisters who’ve died or been cut off, their future self dead, their ambitions impossible.