Cape Mantle Bench, 2023

The mantle in the Black family is the first archive a Black person engages with as it often hosts family portraits, Bibles, books and ephemera that are significant for a family’s understanding and relationship to their traditions and oral histories. The objects placed on the mantle serve as pillars to our histories while the mantle itself holds the foundation for our legacies to be passed forward into the future. Cape Mantle moves the mantle as an object from a silhouette in Black heritage and culture into a promontory vessel of black heritage and culture.