Noor Jones-Bey

She Belongs to Herself, 2022
Color Illustration, paper, felt tip marker, pen, 31 x 43 in.

The Body Project was created to draw connections between women’s changing bodies and the earth. Through the use of spirals and other repetitive shapes found within the growth process reflected in nature and the larger universe, this art project works to remind us of our ever changing and expansive selves. The shapes of the bodies are representatives of self and earth. The works are to help us remember our connections just as the text, Braiding Sweetgrass centers the need to return to indigenous practice, knowledge and ritual as a means to restore reciprocal relationships with ourselves, our communities and our world. Other influences braided into this work include the wisdom and love from stories shared by Dr. Vongi Mpofu of Zimbabwe and Dr. Emilia Afonso Nhalevilo of Mozambique, who each do important work of connecting African indigenous knowledge and science as a means of decolonization.

The Body Project is a work of self and community care much like the rich description of braiding sweetgrass offered by Robin Wall Krimmer or the practice of Ndo’nkodo shared by Dr. Emilia Afonso Nhalevio. The work reminds us that care begins with our ability to be present. It is in noticing the texture, the fragrances, the tugs of relationship so that presence becomes a portal to remember all that we have forgotten. In the preface, she offers us a recipe for braiding sweetgrass, a work done in reciprocal loving and familial relationship with the earth as our mother, as our grandmother. This process of making a braid, also brought me back the ways sisters tend to each other on a sunday afternoon. In this way, sweetgrass is also a metaphor for our own hair. As we breathe in fragrances, feel the texture, we remember that we are one in the same with the earth. The hair in this piece offers a resting place to draw connections across global indigenous groups and practices. The body shape is in honor of Sarah Baartman’s legacy, as a form of intergenerational healing justice and a space to hold our collective need for grief and celebration. Lastly, this work is in honor of the young women, girls and gender expansive folks at Girls for Gender Equity who bravely shared their stories with me in words and in color during my dissertation process.

Thus, the body project is a meditative art process which is meant to be shared much like the process of braiding. The Body Project braids using vibrant color, repetition, intuition and shapes reflecting growth found in nature, such as the spiral which is found throughout nature. The purpose is to refuse perfection, it is an opportunity to be present, to play and be curious about your body and knowledge it carries. This work asks: What would we learn about our bodies, about nature if we just let ourselves be as we are? What if we slowed down to understand our changing bodies drawing upon growth patterns found in nature? How might we shift our relationship to our bodies and change centering curiosity over judgment? This work is about a healing reclamation of bodies and the earth we have right now.

Noor Jones-Bey is a transdisciplinary educator, researcher and artist from the Bay Area, CA. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY where she is pursuing a PHD in Urban Education at the Steinhardt School and holds fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Urban Doctoral Research Initiative and the Graduate Research Institute at NYU. Noor is program director of EXCEL at NYU, a critical literacy and college access program for youth in the South Bronx housed at the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. Noor received an M.A. in Sociology of Education from New York University and a B.A. in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Noor’s interests engage across disciplines of sociology, education, Black and Native studies, and visual culture to examine issues of liminality, identity, space and power as they relate to education. Her dissertation work examines intergenerational knowledge of Black womxn and girls navigating in and out of schools. In her spare time, she loves to cook, dance, run marathons, travel, and stir up good vibes.