A nigga was out for coffee
Inadequate like my window
The Grammys is way too lofty
And I could stay here forever
I could die here
I don’t have to try here
Can I get my two sugars please?”
Noname
The first piece we will explore is one of Kimberly Douglas’ photo shoots: “Stuck.” Douglas, better known by her Instagram handle @kihmberlie, is her own model, photographer, set designer, and overall project manager in tens of photo shoots that she posts online.
One of the highlighted set of stories on her page details the reason she became a one-woman show for her creative projects. As a result of Douglas not being able to afford a photographer nor have a whole set for her photo shoots, she decided to complete all of the various parts of the photo shoots herself: create the set by hand, pose as the model, and assume the role of the photographer.
The laborious processes that Douglas shares with each photo shoot, including “Stuck,” emphasize the disorienting experience of existing as a black woman in a society that has historically overlooked black women’s contributions while also highlighting the disordered attempt at re-imagining the black femme image in spite of centuries of damaging stereotypical depictions of such bodies.
Through “Stuck,” Douglas epitomizes the mystifying existence of being a black woman in the present day—burdened by the inheritance of the harmful representations of black women yet also given the opportunity to reinvent and set the precedent for future, decolonized illustrations of black women.
This immensely confusing state between two types of labor makes one want to do nothing, as Noname expresses in “Reality Check.” Why take on the responsibility to deconstruct oppressive representations of black women in an attempt to imagine and create a future with liberating portrayals? Why reach for the “Grammys” that are “too lofty” when you “could stay here” in a comfortable spot “forever,” where you “don’t have to try”? Douglas answers by calling for black women to rise to the challenge. Even as someone who did not have the necessary resources to achieve her dream photo shot, Douglas fought to ingeniously make her dream into a reality anyways.
Thus, by employing and highlighting the onerous processes used in the designing of the set, Douglas displays an example of how black women can shatter preexisting notions of what being a black femme looks like and create an autonomous understanding of their own reality out of the disordered fragments of the problematic past. Douglas’ intentional choice to draw the curtain on her inventive yet arduous routine of setting up her photo shoots also forces the audience to come to terms with the generally overlooked labor black women have historically put in the building of America and in their novel creations that mainstream society takes for granted.