Tales of the Vulnerability of African Black Women in Transit Spaces

This visual project uses original surrealist collage-making as a critical architectural tactic to capture and expose the vulnerability of black female bodies in spaces of urban-rural transit. The surrealist images act as an allegorical tool to comment, critique, and question the very ‘real’ experiences and vulnerabilities black African women face as they transit between urban and rural landscapes today. My images move beyond the limited methods provided by traditional architectural knowledge to explore alternative spatial imaginaries of everyday issues of vulnerability and safety and to reveal some of the nuanced gendered dynamics black women experience in transit spaces By drawing attention to how women linger and navigate through such spaces, my work seeks to provoke questions regarding the potential for more progressive and imaginative urban futures in the way urban transit and public space are designed.