It was inspired by my amazing poet friend, Bella Dapilma.

She wrote a piece entitled “Darkness before Dawn,” I pulled a few verses from the poem which inspired the creation of this image. In the intro of her poem, she writes “In the beginning there was darkness…in the dark, they carved black hands and they were heavenly“.

This piece is part of a project initiative aimed to challenge the concept of darkness. Some of the most beautiful things can come from darkness, and sometimes things shine the brightest when it is dark.

Darkness should not be synonymous with ugly, evil, bad. It was along those lines where a whole race of people became linked and thereby dehumanized with those adjectives.