Ban’ yuh belly focuses on the grief, anger, and mental health of loved ones who are mourning children they have lost due to violence—systemic or otherwise. The works attempt to disturb the normalcy through which Black lives are violently taken and interrupted. Employing a Trinidadian expression meaning “to hold onto something,” Anique Jordan uses the phrase Ban’ yuh belly to visualize the ways we cope with violence. Centering on mothers and mothering, Jordan’s work contends with the survival strategies used to make sense of the senseless.

Jordan’s practice works with the spaces between historical archive, speculative futures, and what she sees every day. She sources pathways to understand how and where our histories live on our bodies. Over the past four years, she has contended with these questions, trying to make sense of the role they play in our lives, especially in relation to Black women.

• Anique Jordan