There is a sound to freedom.
It doesn’t arrive quietly.
It rings, it breaks, it becomes.

Freedman is my visual testimony to the sacred moment of Juneteenth—not just as a historical milestone, but as a deeply spiritual awakening. This work is a celebration. A cry. A mirror. A reckoning.

At the center, a red chain breaks open—not with subtlety, but with purpose. For me, it is not just iron snapping. It is bondage—physical, mental, spiritual—being torn apart at its core. In that break, I see ancestors standing tall. I see the silence of slavery pierced by the thunder of liberation. I see breath—finally free.

Inside the shape of America, I placed the profiles of a Black man and woman, facing opposite directions, but unified in posture and spirit. They rise—heads lifted, chins tilted skyward—not in defiance, but in undeniable dignity. This upward gaze speaks to something eternal: the insistence that we are more than what history has tried to make of us. That we have always been whole, even when the world refused to see it.

The figures live within the map of the United States because this freedom—our freedom—is inseparable from the American story. We were never outsiders to this land; we are its backbone, its breath, its beauty. The choice to place us within its borders is a declaration: we belong here. Not as footnotes. As foundation.

“This isn’t just about the chains that broke—it’s about the dignity that rose.”

The colors carry their own language. The yellow background radiates celebration, echoing the spirit of parades, cookouts, and community—of Juneteenth in the streets and in our souls. The Pan-African tones embedded in the silhouettes reflect our shared lineage across the Diaspora, while the red chain strikes like a wound and a warning: freedom must be protected, not presumed.

This piece lives inside my larger series, In the Name of Dignity—a body of work born from a personal need to honor the Black spirit in all its complexity: scarred, radiant, resilient. With Freedman, I’m not just remembering history. I’m participating in its healing.

Because Juneteenth is not a page in a textbook.
It is a pulse still beating.
It is the sound of Black folks lifting their heads and saying, We are still here. We are still becoming. We are Freedman.

And that, to me, is the truest kind of freedom.

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