This image is part of a photography series shot in 2018 titled Angel. It was a tribute to a childhood friend by the same name who passed away in April that year. Having experienced the loss of my grandfather around the same time, I found myself fixating on the promise of death — the impermanence of life.

The series at large represented a first-time confrontation with the facets of grief, reflecting on the idea of an exit from the physical world and a more gradual exit from memory. Thinking back now I can say that the series was imagined as a performance, as life is of sorts. Here, we watch as the performer makes his exit.

Historically, Black communities and their members have had an intimate and proximate relationship with the end of life and arrival of death. Through burial practices, rituals, tributes, and art we grieve and celebrate our dead with a holistic understanding of what life and death signify.

We Live As We Die seeks to open up the concept of grief as an entity considerate of race and culture. This exhibit looks to gently explore the complex truths of grief for and with Black people. How our expressions of grief reflect how we experience life and death. How we use that moment to reclaim their personhood. How we make space to memorialize and celebrate what has to be remembered as more than an existing and ending, and instead, as the completion of a full and complicated journey.

Documentation photos by Kristina Corre