The loud silence of war and death always echoes within my mind. For many, we are spectators of history collapsing in distant lands, removed from a reality that we are helpless observers—our words are shields to our righteousness, but our actions are empty gestures of cowards. In this time we live in, those without our fortune of comfort walk between the crossroads of death and destruction, because history is the witness and there are no winners in war, just paths for the powerful paved with the blood of others. As artists, we cannot avoid reflecting these moments of history because it is difficult to bury one’s sadness into the ground of logic or belief. There are no sides to me, and I must state I have no delusion to understand the predicament of mourners, nor do I have the comprehension to understand the motivations of power. I know that in the faint whispers of a weeping mother, all that is left behind is those who gaze at the horizon of uncertainty. Regardless of our place on this planet, the conflict of a nation bleeds forward with hate and anger. The history of humanity has been plagued with never-ending conflict, mostly in the name of preserving supremacy. Yet, it is difficult to elude that all was necessary, that all brought forward a victory. We position ourselves, in the cloak of melancholy, in wonder at the plight of those less fortunate, those that have been dealt the card of shedding their innocence and living with the remembrances of a hopeful future.

Hence, I have no words to encompass the sadness that looms within me or the reserve of my weakness for what is in front of me. For in my comfort, I am weakened by a sense of helplessness to those who suffer from a plight of misfortune. For those who linger in search of safety that is infected with the injustice of time and an unforgiving circumstance. So, I can only be the mirror to the voiceless, a mirror that questions the loss of our collective humanity, a humanity that remains in the misty fog of privilege and comfort, while those less fortunate endure the uncertainty of another day. There are no champions in conflict, for the line is blurry to me, I no longer know where everyone is but all that I know—this is where I am.

“This is where I am,” commissioned by Public Art Fund, presented on over 330 JCDecaux bus shelters across New York City, Chicago, and Boston in the United States, as well as in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from March 1 – May 21, 2023.