SOUTHERN SHORES TOUR

I am so excited to share with you the most ambitious performance project I’ve ever undertaken. Beginning in Summer/Fall 2026, as the United States enters its 250th year, I will be touring the Southern Shores to perform a series of Hair Paintings with and for community members in six cities: St. Augustine/Fort Mose. Florida, Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah and Columbus, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Shores have always felt like thresholds to me—liminal spaces shaped by memory, labor, migration, and tradition. These six shores, in particular, are foundational sites in our shared American story. The legacies of enslavement, commerce, and innovation live in this land and in the people who call it home.

Growing up in Alabama, my grandmother, Ruth Mae Giles, always told me, “Your hair is your strength.” This project is rooted in that resilience.

A Hair Painting is an interdisciplinary ritual that honors our ancestors and acknowledges the land itself as a keeper of history. Through gesture, movement, and paint, these performances memorialize local stories while imagining new futures.

Throughout the tour, I’ll be hosting public meals, conversations, and recording sessions to gather stories about the rivers, shores, and deltas that define each place. These oral histories—people’s memories, myths, and lived experiences—will become the soundscapes that carry each performance. Together we will build an archive to be treasured for generations.

To bring this multi-city tour to life, I’m fundraising $100,000 for equipment, travel and accommodations, community engagement, documentation support, soundscape production, and public performances and programs.

I’m excited about the support from Alabama Contemporary Art Center, based in Mobile. I am close to announcing more local partners soon, so stay tuned.

There are three giving tiers:

The Sand
Donate $25.00 or more

Each grain of sand forms the ground where my work begins.
Thank you email with monthly photos.
Amount is fully tax-deductible.

The Shore
Donate $100.00 or more

The meeting place of land and water — where stories, labor, and memory converge.
Personalized note card with printed hair painting stroke and printed image of artist performing.
Thank you email with monthly photos.
Amount over $5.00 is tax-deductible.

The Sky
Donate $500.00 or more

The horizon that holds possibility. Tote bag with screen printed Hair Painting stroke.
Personalized note card with printed hair painting stroke and printed image of artist performing.
Thank you email with monthly photos.
Amount over $50.00 is tax-deductible.