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Source of All Hair, Wearer of All Socks

Nov. 15–Dec. 15
Opening Reception: Friday, Nov. 15, 3–5 p.m.

Artist Bio

Sam Modder, a Nigerian Sri Lankan artist born in Lagos and raised in Sri Lanka, lives and works in Tampa. She graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, in 2017 with a BA in Studio Art and Engineering, and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, in 2022. She is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa. Her work has been widely exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces. Recently, her work was shown at the Sarasota Art Museum (2024), African American Museum of Dallas, TX  (2023), Catskills Art Space in Catskills, NY  (2024), Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ (2024), and as part of Miami Beach’s No Vacancy 2023, where she installed seven murals at the Catalina Hotel during Miami Beach Art Week. 

Artist Statement

I work figuratively in pen, collage, and digital media to portray larger-than-life Black, female characters taking up space in real and imagined worlds. In my most recent series, I present a subjective Black woman's fairytale to process interlocking structures of oppression. Like a storybook turned mural, the installations are digitally manipulated ballpoint pen drawings that follow a Black woman in her nightdress and striped socks in a world made up of only her and her duplicates. The work is an allegory for our contemporary condition, confronting questions of power, exploitation, and resistance.

I position this work within the speculative practice of the Black imaginary—a centering of Black dreams and fantasies to create alternate spaces of both comfort and confrontation. The spaces I create are less utopia and more speculative test lab, a way to decenter broken realities and focus instead on the imaginary to help understand and rethink oppressive structures. Black hair in particular serves as a powerful protagonist in my work pushing the narrative forward in soft curls and defiant shapes.

As my work towers above you, I hope you will step back into a space of childhood, wonder, and possibility. That you would, in the best of ways, feel small and open, ready and willing to hear one more story.