A homegrown story. After being assigned to interpret works exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum’s Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt Exhibition, I selected Lauren Halsey’s 2022 work titled FreedomEx. A take on ancient hieroglyphic ruins, the sculpture took inscriptions of different cultural institutions surrounding the artist’s place of origin.

Inspired by the amalgamation of ideas, I interpreted the inscriptions with lasered engravings featuring parodied logos of notable Midwestern institutions. The carved iconography was stripped into a raw, draped periwinkle scarf. The piece is styled over a complementary burgundy tunic with a couture-inspired open cut back and sheer contoured organza pencil skirt with a raw selvage hem. Classic, matured silhouettes clash against contemporary Midwestern iconography, ripened by the oblivious memories of childhood.