Memorial for Souls Can’t Go Home is a multisensory installation by Orlando Thompson, composed of objects found at roadside memorials—balloons, flowers, stuffed animals, candles, and photography. The work questions what happens to souls forcibly separated from their bodies by systemic violence against Black people. Visitors enter a darkened space, met with sounds of Lake Martin and eerie, fragmented voices. As they move, their presence disturbs the sculptures, altering the soundscape. Candlelight faintly illuminates the objects, creating an atmosphere of reflection. Thompson explores the idea of souls gaining density, bound to this world, unable to ascend beyond the physical.

Memorial For Souls Can't Go Home, 2022. Multi-sensory, mixed media installation. Vinegar Projects, Birmingham, AL.

I was invited by Sophia Al-Maria to contribute to INVISIBLE LABORS: Daydream Therapy at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. I created same | emas, a resurrected documentary about a Mathaf security guard, blending our 2012 interview with footage of my own family from 2002. This deliberate overlap blurred the boundaries between his story and mine. Al-Maria’s exhibition explores labor, creativity, and the role of storytelling in reclaiming futures. Collaborating with artists like Aparna Jayakumar, Joe Namy, and Kelsey Lu, she transforms the space into a site for layered narratives, weaving past, present, and future within Doha’s evolving history.

My photography documents the spaces my body has occupied. For two years, I used 35mm half-frame cameras, to create diptychs—two images sharing a single frame. Each captures a moment I felt compelled to stop, compose, and document. The paired images form a shared narrative, deepening my understanding of their subjects and myself. In my exhibition, some photographs were traditionally displayed, while others faced the wall, requiring viewers to physically engage. This reflects my lived experience—moving through the world with agency yet always forced to engage with society due to the inescapable realities of race..