Archival Art Print of "Harriet" by Aurora Levins Morales

About The Work I think of Harriet Tubman as an epileptic ancestor. Not only did she live with intense seizures, as I have, but they were also caused by violence. Harriet was struck in the head with an iron weight thrown by an overseer on the plantation where she was enslaved. I was neurologically poisoned with chemicals forced on my people by US colonialism in what I consider ecoviolence. Harriet’s head is surrounded by the corona of a protective passionflower. Around her blaze the colors of electrical storms and neurons, while the Drinking Gourd she followed as she guided enslaved people north to freedom illuminates a corner of the night sky. About The Ferment Series My multi-genre project, Ferment, explores the impact of “chemicals of control” starting with my own pesticide-induced epilepsy and expanding into a global story of military and agricultural toxicity. My work, in words or in visual art, never documents the terrible without offering some medicine for it. In this case, it’s an immersion into microbiology and the beneficial bacteria that can bioremediate everything from the pesticide dieldrin, to plastic waste, to the residues of war.