My work Skin Color is a large endeavor. As I go on the journey to color match 1,000 people. I am surrendering to the fact that this community driven work will take paths that I never could have envisioned.
Last year about this time Henry Johnson Jr. answered superpower to the prompt, My Skin Color Is...
This response intrigued me, as I had been thinking of ways to decontextualize race in different ways. I searched for different instances where skin color and race were not associated. One of the instances I considered was the super hero Mystique from X-men. Her blue skin color is unique and not related to race.
More conversation with Henry lead to the current chapter of Skin Color; My Skin Color is My Superpower. Beginning session conversations with talk of superpowers allows us to enter a space of self reflection in another way. The superpowers we have and want say something about us and lead us to a place of self-reflection and appreciation.
In addition to the idea of self-reflection, the vivid and bright colors that we associate with super heroes are the same colors I use to create skin colors. The majority of super heroes are represented by the primary colors red, blue and yellow which are the colors I use to create my perfect brown. I am very interested in our associations with these colors and what they represent in our lives.
I am also interested to see where this superpower train of thought leads us as I move forward to Skin Color number 250.
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