Black Women Off Duty, Save Yourself

2023

DESCRIPTION: Black Women Off Duty, Save Yourself is both declaration
and demand. Repeating the phrase like a chant or emergency broadcast,
the work confronts the expectation that Black women must continuously
rescue, nurture, and endure at the expense of themselves.
The piece emerged from the artist’s reflections on her first job as a
teenage lifeguard, where she was trained to remain vigilant and ready to
save others at all times. Decades later, she reconsiders that conditioning
through the lens of healing and self-preservation. Here, “save yourself”
becomes an act of radical love rather than selfishness—a refusal to
disappear beneath obligation, exhaustion, and survival mode.
Using the visual language of protest graphics and public messaging, the
work transforms self-care into collective call-to-action. It insists that rest,
softness, and boundaries are not luxuries, but necessary acts of liberation.