“It's hard to stop rebels that time travel” is a portrait, landscape, and text-based project inspired by stories of slaves, maroons, and runaways whose existence is only revealed through fragmentary traces in the historical archive. This work is haunted by the traces of maroons and runaway slaves found in historical archives. These fragments expand narratives about the Black experience and their connection to the American landscape.

Maroons were enslaved people who ran away from their captors but did not flee to the North. Instead, they chose to make a life in hard-to-access swamps or in the wild spaces between plantations. The strategies and techniques the maroons used to survive in the ungoverned space between plantations can be thought of as “freedom practices.” I have used these stories to radically reenvision Black people’s connection to the American landscape.

The project filters through me using the portal framework to guide my travel through the Eastern North Carolina landscape. I found these portals in the break of algae in a swamp, tire tracks left on the grass field, the reflection of the sunrise in a church window, and other naturally and unnaturally occurring apparitions.

This place-based project starts in the hidden world of borderland maroons living in the margins of plantations in the 18th century and stretches across time to present-day counties surrounding New Bern, NC, which was established in 1710. Historically, New Bern's location on the coast made it a hub for human trade. The region is rich with important historical moments as one of the earliest colonized spaces in the United States.

Maroons existed anywhere where slavery was practiced. I have chosen to position this project in this region because I can trace parts of my family history to this part of eastern North Carolina. In 1918, my grandfather was born outside New Bern and left the region during the great migration. This project represents a more personal approach to interrogating archives because it is based on a landscape I can trace to my ancestors. More and more, Black people like myself are seeking answers to questions surrounding their origin. This journey through our families' pasts necessitates us to walk the paths of our ancestors.