In 2018, I created a body of work called Survival Tools, which ruminated on how difficult it can be to reconcile disagreement, not because individuals are far apart, but because they are intimately close. It’s the jarring feeling of when we cannot come to terms with neighbors and family members despite our proximity.

Where these struggles occur is what I have come to call the Uncommon Ground. From personal to professional to political spaces, I have paid attention to disputes between people who plead for common ground yet gloss over perspectives and leave issues unresolved.

I have wondered that if instead of common ground, we should advocate and claim space for identities and representations that are rare.

Uncommon Ground evaluates what has been lost amidst cultural struggles and assimilations. It flips the perspective on familiar but ill-told stories. It challenges the archetypes that have shaped how people traditionally understand a story, and what they celebrate or reject. In this rare but expanding space, spiders build matriarchies here. Women reclaim the allegories that misrepresented them. This is space to unlearn outdated beliefs, to nurture that which is rare within us and nonexistent without us.