I am a visual artist and work abstractly on paintings, sculptures and illustrations. My work is playful, and the self portrait I have submitted draws on themes of queerness and femininity.
When my mom was a kid, a white boy had a crush on her. So, the KKK set a cross on fire in her aunt’s front yard. A white boy couldn’t like a brown girl. And although this piece is more about me and my experiences, my mom sets everything up. I am her carbon copy. And I have spent my whole life walking right next to her, step-in-step, hearing, seeing, being right there when the racist questions are asked, when those looks are shot in her direction. And then, when I started going out on my own, or in school, the overt racism started to be hurtled at me.
What does the UVA student look like? This is hard to answer when we rarely look alike. What could connect us when we come from all different backgrounds?
Immigrants, legacies, first-gen students.
Students whose families owned slaves and those whose ancestors were slaves.
Out of state students, the NOVA kids, and those from just down the road.
1 out of 6
Okay, please gather around the tree; we’re just missing one person. One, two, three, four, five, six … nineteen.
Oh, were you here the whole time?
“Yes.”
Okay, well, let’s go ahead and introduce ourselves: name, major, and hometown.
“Hi, my name is Sadie Randall, I’m in the engineering school I plan to major in Mechanical Engineering, and I’m from Houston, Texas.”
