DENOUNCING PANOPTICISM:
The Economy of Survival
A delicately hand-constructed double-crochet halter-neck top articulated with hand-collected oyster shell embellishments and finished with a corset-style back, paired with relaxed cream denim jeans.
Through slow handwork and delicate construction, this look asks what materials are allowed to signify elegance and luxury. Hand-collected oyster shells act as symbols of Black diasporic memory, community-driven Black economies, and survival, while the labor-intensive craft processes reclaim forms of making historically dismissed within Western systems of value. Through materiality and adornment, this work insists on honoring ancestral knowledge, elevating histories often pushed to the margins, and imagining liberation through craft