Hippo Artz

Their Expectations

36 x 48 x 1.5"

Acrylic Paint on Stretched Canvas

$5000

As a Haitian woman, I am met with constant pressure about what I should be. My body becomes currency, my life framed by expectation. I am reduced to role, to function, to value imposed from duty.

Artist's Statement:

My work explores internal landscapes shaped by pressure, expectation, and endurance. I am interested in accumulation rather than spectacle—subtle shifts compound until what appears stable begins to strain. Each piece maps a psychological terrain that is felt before it is explained.
I center Black women within emotional and psychological spaces that move between surreal imagery and intimate moments. My figures resist resolution. They remain present, contradictory, and aware, holding tension between vulnerability and control.
Color and form function psychologically rather than descriptively. Distortion, repetition, and fragmentation allow what is carried silently to surface. I interrogate expectation as structure, strength as obligation, and composure as performance. Through saturated color and fractured form, I make visible burden, surveillance, endurance, and the slow erosion that follows.
Rather than depicting collapse, my paintings hold the moment before it—the tightening, the strain, the quiet negotiation between holding and breaking.