Dear Black Girl Project - Love letters to Black Women 2022-

The Dear Black Girl Project is an ongoing exhibition and community conversation affirming the experiences of brown and black women. Inspired by the poem Dear Black Girl, by Candace Nicholas-Lippman this curated space is an alluring visual collaboration of embroidered quotes, shared narratives, images, African textiles & found objects curated in a space designed to facilitate healthy conversations around being a black woman in the world. It affords viewers with diverse opportunities to witness the journey.

Flag Studies (In Progress)

Flag Studies is a meditation on statecraft and how Philippine national identity is invented and imagined. This series also aims to critique the state-sanctioned "imaginings" of Philippine national identity, its ties to American imperial rule, and how its contemporary articulations evolve within the Philippine diaspora. For these studies, I use different types of fabric from all over the Philippines, along with imagery from various sources.

Juicy Fruits

Juicy Fruits explores jewelry’s role as signifier, and a means throughout history for communicating availability, fertility, and fecundity, through the representation of a variety of foods considered to be aphrodisiacs. The work is  constructed from meticulously handsawn steel lace, formed and welded to create pieces that simultaneously read as solid, while also open and airy. The lush lace patterning traverses the entirety of surfaces, sometimes obscuring the truth of the form. In these heavily decorated objects the viewer finds a connection between nourishment and sensual arousal.

The Throwaways

This project explores the history of mental health facilities and jails in the US over the past century. Mothers that dropped their children off because they were "hard to manage" placed in facilities with children who were truly in need of treatment due to living with advanced mental illness. Faclilities that were horribly overcrowded which grew into the places of nightmares. Then we have the penal system. Grown men and women that are incarcerated due to systemic failures, watching opportunities and dreams slip away. Thankfully we have evolved in some areas, but we have so much farther to go.

Behind Closed Doors

Continuing my explorations of the concept of home, I build upon this idea by constructing domestic interior settings that unrobes our performative nature presented to society and exposes the intimate and private moments that occur behind closed doors. In this exhibition I present jarring juxtapositions, commanding portraits, and sumptuous scenes of spliced reality. Extracting components from family photo albums, vintage magazines, and

Home (Handle With Care)

In Sterling-Wilson’s solo exhibition Home (Handle with Care), she explores the idea of “home” beyond a roof and four walls. Instead, she examines how any environment can provide a domicile feeling of home. Through her mixed-media collages, she contrasts the feelings of comfort and sustainability with the repercussions of destruction and/or invasion. This exhibition visually articulates stunning scenes of the Black experience through layers of found imagery.
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