USS Blue

About

USS Blue considers the complicated relationship between Black Americans, military service, and the promise of belonging. The title comes from the Navy ship my grandfather served aboard in 1963. As a young man, he enlisted to join his brother, travel, and experience a world beyond the United States for the first time.

The work considers how the military meets young Black men at a pivotal moment of becoming, offering mobility, stability, adventure, and access to freedoms that should already accompany citizenship. A figure appears to dunk over a basketball rim, suspended between aspiration and containment, while saturated, almost radioactive foliage suggests an environment both abundant and unstable. Surrounding him, the red frame comes alive like a Venus flytrap—seductive before it reveals itself as a mechanism of capture.

Rooted in double consciousness, USS Blue holds these contradictions without resolving them: the military can genuinely expand one’s world while simultaneously asking for Black labor, loyalty, and sacrifice in exchange for the promise of belonging.