Of the Conversations I Wish We’d Have

Fodrie, Noa

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Of the Conversations I Wish We’d Have Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/6w924d71b

Abstract

Through the materiality of installation, written word, painting, and performance, I have created a
ritual place where I can once again feel safe and held in my body. From this embodiment I
negotiate the conversation of body, race, and space while holding others accountable for their
complacency, creating a space for people of color to process out loud rather than holding it in
their bodies, and finding my place to exist in between.

While the exhibition Of the Conversations I Wish We’d Have focuses on installation and
written word, the books and their display are built from my studio practice of painting and
performance. After years of code switching, being the landing place for people’s questions about
race, and dodging the questioning of my own body, double- consciousness became a way of self
preservation. The term double- consciousness was coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, introduced in his
book The Souls of Black Folks. Within it he includes this definition– “It is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others,
of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One
ever feels his twoness, —an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled
strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being
torn asunder.” At times, it becomes safer to stay in this second self; at times it becomes difficult
to break from it. For the sake of feeling safe in my body, this double-consciousness disconnected
me from my inner world and memory, created a distrust of my intuition, and set the inability to
process the image of my own body.

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