My engagement with Fawn is just another life’s work and artistic practice. My cousin Nat once told me that I was a person who’s “dedicated to The Small Place” (Kincaid) —and she is not wrong. Who I am and what I do is shaped by my love of home, The Bahamas, The Caribbean. A region rich in communal resilience and an innate demand for its sovereignty. Alan Dundes defines folklore as “autobiographical ethnography— that is, it is a people’s own description of themselves”, and he viewed folklore as a vital educational tool. My work gets to the root of folkloric practices. At its core, folklore is a pedagogical framework rooted in accessibility and human connection. This project adds to my ongoing humanist anthology by recounting my initial interaction with Fawn; an account told in real-time, of what it looks like to engage with Fawn. In years to come, it will be a memoiristic guidebook on how we use the ways of Fawn (gentleness, love, trickery, and storytelling) as tools for our liberation and self-formation.

Throughout this body of work you will see Fawn in various forms. At times Fawn will be an amalgamation of recognizable beings -- human, animal and plant; Other times she will be patterns made from a repeated mark of backbent contortionists flipped and twisted to form a shape similar to a Sankofa heart; She may be a texture, a color or even a form in-flux — masking, shifting, blending, oozing, fading, and opaquing. Fawn is situated in Guanima, a place and time where the evening blends into night into morning and back again. Is it a place that thrives on vibrancy, where color is symbolic, and play is a way of life.