Our environment may seem natural and neutral at times but the architectural design of the spaces we inhabit organize bodies in space with varying degrees of coercion. Structures are often arranged to control who goes where and who can access what.

For instance, in certain cities bridges were designed to be low so that buses could not pass under them; this was done to prevent people of color from accessing public beaches. In other parts, walls and highways separate historically white and black neighborhoods.

The space and the community I focus on is Princeton University. The spatial design of Princeton is a product of a system of exclusion that is--literally--built into the institution. The school created a monument for Woodrow Wilson, who, by the way, thought it "altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter Princeton". Yet, here I am. A colored man and an alumni of the Woodrow Wilson School (which now goes by a different name after years and years of student-led advocacy and administrative battles that came to a head during the Black Lives Matter movement).

And every time I went to class or attended a lecture, I was reminded of the man. Reminded that I was in a space that was built for him and in his honor. Still, I stood. Mocking his presence with my shadow.

The aim of this body of work is to explore discriminatory exclusion and the role of architecture in dividing people within and across communities. The subjects are structures and this was done with the intent of exploring concepts related to the anthropological analysis of “things as social agents”, the saliency of the oppressor and the subjugation of the oppressed—their mute companion--, as they pass from margin to margin.

The images are positioned in a way where they seem to be in conversation with one another. And the structures on the outer edges (margin) are primarily African art pieces that I found buried in the basement of the Art building on campus—somewhere in the periphery. Whereas the statue (in black and white) of John Witherspoon, who owned slaves, is an imposing figure right in the heart of campus by Firestone library.

The title of “Center to Margin” is also alluding to elements of Bell Hooks’ writings in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.