"Eve", 2018. Watercolor collage

There is a lot of symbolism here. But I would love to talk about one particular thing about this piece. Many black woman were wet nurses for their slave owners. To further explain what this meant "Intelexual Media" gave a great recap of the history.

“History is not about the past. It’s about the present!” –Dr. El-Kati

"Before the mammy stereotype was born during the post-civil war revisionist period, every plantation had a mammy. As described by historian Kimberly Wallace Sanders, “more often [mammy] served as a generic name for slave women who served as a wet nurse or baby nurse for white children.” This was in large part to the trend of medical experts of the day discouraging mothers from breastfeeding. Outsourcing breastfeeding was not a new phenomenon during the pre-antebellum, as it had been occurring since the biblical times.

While black women were forced to give life to babies they did not birth, their own children sometimes went hungry. Per Sanders, “A lot of slave babies died during slavery because they weren’t breastfed. They were fed concoctions of dirty water and cows milk.” As any doctor will tell you, breastfeeding often creates a bond between the mother and child, and slave wet nurses were not immune to feeling affection for their white owners babies and vice versa.