Camille Hernandez has the audacity of women planting orchards to feed future generations.
Artist Statement
Oppression works at the pace of capitalism, which works at the pace of social media, which operates at a pace unsustainable to humanity. Dignity dies at this pace. Camilleβs poetry interrupts oppressionβs velocity by recreating narratives dignifying Black women, Filipino women, poor women, immigrant women, disabled women, medically marginalized women, gender-expansive women, and mothering women. These marginalized women intersect within her. Camilleβs writing invites readers to explore the complex care-based leadership of our grandmothers, mothers, and aunties as blueprints for survival. Every poem explores marginalized womenβs survival as a map through oppressionβs thicket. What remains is a body of work amplifying our survival, intuition, interconnection, and defiant joy.
Camilleβs work explores the fluidity of intimacy in marginalized womenβs relationships. It invites readers to reflect on their allegiance to oppressing and exploiting marginalized women. If language is the poetβs jungle, then dignity is Camilleβs machete. I craft poetry into vibrant portraits of marginalized women. With a writing notebook in hand, I contemplate how language dictates cultural, social, economic, and political realities. Camilleβs pen hacks away withering flora, uncovering nutrient-rich life beneath rotting roots. Camilleβs writing serves meals from those nutrients, proclaiming dignity through pairing vibrant textures, intricate patterns, and sensory experiences. Portrait and quilting artists like Kehinde Wiley, Bisa Butler, and Precious D Lovell inspire her creative expression. Poets Elizabeth Acevedo, Jericho Brown, and Ariana Brown push Camille to carve new narrative trails that explore the hushed intimacies lost in suppressed histories.
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