Description
ARTIST STATEMENT
For the past several years I have been exploring the temporality of Blackness through the lens of the residence time presence of Black bodies in the ocean, from the time of the global trade in human beings from the African continent. Residence time is the amount of time it takes for the ocean to completely consume something, and my conception of it is influenced by the scholar Christina Sharpe’s seminal text “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being.”
Sharpe notes that our bodies are composed largely of water and salt, and sodium can have a residence time presence of up to 260 million years. This means that my ancestors, who left the continent hundreds of years before my birth, will maintain a presence in the ocean long after my bones have turned to dust.
This work conceives of the millions of Black bodies in residence time as an articulation of the human presence in the ocean over the span of millions of years. The title of the print refers to the text contained in the abstract depiction of land and seascapes.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kathie Foley-Meyer is a mixed media artist, curator and arts consultant. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from UC Irvine. Her current art practice is focused on the remembrance of the Africans who did not survive the slave trade voyages and maintain a residence time presence in the world’s oceans. As an arts consultant she worked on a corporate social responsibility program for a company in the global finance sector and she has consulted with arts organizations serving Black communities in Los Angeles. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is part of the permanent art collection of the National Academy of Sciences. Her most recent project as a curator was the 2024 Los Angeles exhibition “Descent & Transformation, Vol. I: Voyages to the Americas.” In 2025 she was an Artist-in-Residence at UMass Amherst for the academic initiative Slavery North, which investigates the history of the slave trade in Canada and the northern United States.
© Kathie Foley-Meyer