Selected Work
This is a record of practice across film, photography, archives and social practice. Each project is an experiment in how stories shape memory, place, and power. What follows is not comprehensive — it is a constellation of works in conversation with one another, and with the world.
Harlem Realization (2025, live cinema performance in four movements). A layered performance weaving portraiture, oral history, archival outtakes, poetry, and sound into a meditation on Harlem as a living archive. The piece reflects on the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and cultural inheritance across generations.
After Sherman (2022, POV/ITVS, feature-length documentary film, 118 min). A meditation on inheritance and land in the South Carolina Lowcountry, weaving archival research, oral history, and ritual to reflect on Black life, memory, and the aftermath of trauma.
Portrait, number 1 man (day clean ta sun down) (2019, performance film, 12 hr 20 min). A collaboration with performance by artist Sheldon Scott, filmed and edited by Jon-Sesrie Goff. The work documents Scott processing rice by hand from sunup to sundown, embodying the labor of his Gullah/Geechee ancestors and restoring humanity to the narrative of slavery in the American South. Featuring an original score by Tamar-kali.
Balk (in development, research initiated 2020). Tracing the echoes of the CIA’s MKULTRA experiments on Black inmates in Kentucky during the 1950s, Balk examines the collision of state violence, civil rights struggle, and the psychological terrain of Black masculinity. Moving from secret mind-control trials inside penitentiary walls to the public unrest of 1967–68 Louisville, the film confronts a history of involuntary use of Black bodies in American science and justice, while probing the prisons—societal, physical, and mental—that continue to shape Black life in the Midwest.
From Sea to Sea (2014, 1 min 15 sec, edition of 4 + 2 AP). A look across the Atlantic Ocean from the Cape Coast in Ghana to Coastal Carolina in the Americas through the lens of an early twentieth century traditional Ewe fetish priest mask.
dakar (looking for ousmane, 2017, 35mm B&W scanned negatives). Inspired by the debate between French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch and Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène in 1965, Sembene pointed out the limitations of ethnography and direct cinema. A year later he would release Black Girl, the first African film made in Africa by an African filmmaker, jump starting an era of cinema in Senegal that has since been in decline since the 1990s.
A Site of Reckoning: Battlefield (2016, 4 min 47 sec loop, edition of 4 + 2 AP). A meditation on the aftermath of the murders at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC using footage from before, directly after and weeks following the mass shooting of the Emanuel 9 in 2015.
A Site of Reckoning (2015-2016, 13” x 19” digital photographic prints , (6) 19” x 13” screenprints). Using original photographs and archival materials collected by a lifelong member of Mother Emanuel AME Church, I explore the tensions between faith and politics, pastoral care and national healing, and the dynamics of collective memory across communities, polities, and time.
Light Weaver (2015, 3 min loop, edition of 4 + 2 AP). The migration of black bodies across the Atlantic Ocean during the transatlantic slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced a distinctive African American community referred to as the Gullah people who live along the coast of South Carolina. The Gullah people have been successful in actively preserving many aspects of the West African culture and language of their ancestors. Light Weaver is composed of 36 tracks of vertically cropped videos of a Gullah netmaker and basket weaver, their movements create the horizontal lines.
Colored Collage (2015 – present, runtime varies). Using audio primarily from Goff’s old cell phone voice and memos from his family’s archival records, this long durational work systematically integrates a 1940 Negro Primary School Reader, computer-generated mixed media, video outtakes and personal iPhone videos. Colored Collage is a living organism that follows specific guidelines as it continues to grow and change over time.
faith of our mothers (2016). On a small tube TV placed on side table, a red hat traces time leaving echoes of itself as the woman wearing it rocks her head side to side during a church service. Next to the TV is a bowl of peppermints and a photograph of women of the civil rights movement.
notes for a hypothetical project (2014 – present, 13” x 19” photographic prints). Theses photographs are visual notes for a hypothetical rebranding project of the South of the Border tourist attraction in SC. I began to imagine what could be representative of the actual border between North and South Carolina and how the existing structures can be re-purposed while improving the economic conditions of the county.
Plezier! (2013, 2015, 2 min 22 sec). This short experimental documentary focuses on the Dutch celebration during the Zwarte Piet Festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands and their portrayal of St. Nicholas’ controversial blackface servant, Black Pete who dons a curly afro and giant bright red lips.
Police Courts (2015, 2 min 32 sec, edition of 4 + 2 AP). “White Flight” from urban neighborhoods began in the early 1950s and accelerated after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. As racial tensions escalated in 1968, the North End of Hartford, CT burned in orchestra with Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other cities across America. After more than half a century of divestment of resources in the community, "The Police Court," remains a gathering place for locals in Hartford despite the closure of a much-needed substation that gave the court its name.
Mr. Horace, Hatter (2004/2014, DV, 8 min 15 sec). This film was made near the end of the filmmaker’s apprenticeship with Horace Weeks — the first Black man to own a hat factory in New York’s Garment District. Born in Mississippi in 1928, Weeks came to the city in 1948 and went on to run the legendary Peter & Irving workshop, where he designed, crafted, and restored hats for decades. The film documents his reservoir of knowledge and indomitable spirit, preserving the presence of a hidden legend in American fashion history.
proximity politics (2014 – present). Using the PrimeSense (or Kinect) to measure distance, the distance of the user to the screen will determine what video/images will play. The initial command is “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” and the images change on the screen based upon the number of people present and the proximity to the sensor. This project requires at least 12’ of uninterrupted space between user and the sensor. The project is powered by Isadora & ran on a Mac system.
rice everlasting (2016). A 5′ x 18″ acrylic silhouette of the Gullah corridor. Pressed underneath are flowers of the life everlasting plant, which has been used for generations as a remedy to ailments. The plant grows wild in the corridor. Stacked above is Carolina Gold rice. Georgetown County, SC was home to the richest rice plantations in the world prior to the civil war.
Train(ed) (2013, 14 min). A dark dramatic comedy exploring how learned behavior, digital culture, and desire collide when the boundaries between performance and intimacy begin to blur.