The Great Awakening

They turned "woke" into a slur, a word hurled at anyone who dared to see clearly, to stay awake to injustice, to refuse the comfort of looking away. The Great Awakening takes that word back and returns it to its truth.

A sphere of controlled excess, the work arrives as both garden and cosmos, a world in the act of opening its eyes. Densely encrusted glass roses, luminous blue pearls, translucent leaves, and delicate white blossoms; its lower hemisphere pulses with a deep indigo accumulation, as though the earth itself is still forming. Above, life erupts in full bloom. But look closer. Nested throughout the floral abundance are glass eyes, clear, brown, green, hazel, gazing outward in every direction. To be awake is to witness. In queer history, being truly seen has always been survival, and these eyes refuse to close. They are the community looking back, wide awake, unwilling to un-see what awareness has made plain.

Placed within an endless mirror box, the piece multiplies into infinity, a single awakened world becoming a universe of awakened worlds. To stay woke, this piece insists, is not a threat to be feared but a beginning to be welcomed: the moment a society opens its eyes and discovers the view is more beautiful for everyone it now includes.