Artist Statement: Samantha Modder

I work figuratively in pen, collage, and digital media to portray larger-than-life Black, female characters taking up space in real and imagined worlds. In my most recent series, I present a subjective Black woman’;s fairytale to process interlocking structures of oppression. Like a storybook turned mural, the installations are digitally manipulated ballpoint pen drawings that follow a Black woman in her nightdress and striped socks in a world made up of only her and her duplicates. The work is an allegory for our contemporary condition, confronting questions of power, exploitation, and resistance.

In this particular exhibit at Artspace Gallery, I focus on The Wearer of All Socks, a towering figure whose accumulation of socks in a world where most have two speaks to her power and ambition. I position her and other works in this series, within the speculative practice of the Black imaginary—a centering of Black dreams and fantasies to create alternate spaces of both comfort and confrontation. The spaces I create are less utopia and more speculative test lab, a way to decenter broken realities and focus instead on the imaginary to help understand and rethink oppressive structures. 

As my work towers above you, I hope you will step back into a space of childhood, wonder, and possibility. That you would, in the best of ways, feel small and open, ready and willing to hear one more story.