Black Women Hours, Off Duty

2023

DESCRIPTION: Black Women Hours, Off Duty is a text-based work that
reclaims rest as sacred space. Borrowing from the visual language of
schedules, signage, and public notice, the piece transforms ordinary
typography into a declaration of self-preservation. Every day marked “off
duty” becomes an act of refusal against the expectation that Black women
must endlessly care for others while neglecting themselves.
Created as part of the ongoing series My First Job Was a Lifeguard. I Was
Trained to Save Others at Fifteen. I Learned How to Care for Myself in My
Forties, the work reflects the artist’s evolving understanding of care—not
only as something extended outward, but something owed inward. Bold
and minimal, the piece functions simultaneously as protest, prayer, and
permission slip: a reminder that rest is not weakness, but survival.