All Eyes on Us

Description

This abstract painting depicts an eye with Kintinkantan (an Adinkra symbol meaning ego centrisim) representing techocracy and white supremacy as the pupil of a blue eye, attempting to peer through and around African fabric. The background is lavender with dripped lines of black, brown, and yellow, representing the peace and serenity people of color have found despite the violence enacted on their communities (represented by a bright red mark with white drips juxtaposed against the background). Interspersed between the background and foreground are two additional Adinkra symbols (Kokuromite and Duafe, meaning teamwork and care, respectively) representing our collective need to work together to care and protect ourselves. Bright green semi-circles cover the bottom of the painting (representing both an abstract plant and chains being broken), symbolizing that our ability to learn, grow, and change our environments will be the key to our collective freedom from technocratic and abusive surveillance. 

All Eyes on Us

By Dr. Chanel Beebe, 2025

Conspiracy theories once confined to the original woke, now manifesting through our phones...

Technology turned traitor at the hands of those who pay for it the most...

Our babies’ most precious thoughts sold and copied for the price of rent and school clothes...

We foretold stories of these days, Octavia, Jill, Tawana, Grace...

We warned us of how much they wanted to see and needed to control,

We warned us of the eyes on our data and our souls, 

We screamed the value of our faces before we placated the devices

and our vices for convenience and feeling new.

So we grew our own resistance and shielded our sacred with our kinship.

Now, when we feel the eyes burning holes in us,

we rub our hands together and blow the dust from our roots,

spray the cameras with communal glue, 

and learn to read and sue about the terms and conditions.

The intentions unfurl as the policies do, and we get freer as we learn not to be seen through.

Our growth will break the chains, 

and until then, we wave the flags of what refuses to be enslaved... 

Our African, our Indigenous, and our Black outs offer maps and tracks to a world 

unsurveilled and protected.

Eyes and hands off our Mecca.