By Mercury Wolff
Content note: partial nudity.
I found myself absorbed by Nina Simone’s crying in her reimagined cover of “Strange Fruit.” I myself cried each time I heard it, then shared it with every friend I came into contact with.
Several weeks later, I began to develop this concept communicating how I came about discovering my blackness, waking up from internalized racism, and my rebellion against the limited ideas from my youth.
The rebellion in this piece is reflected in my partial nudity, as Dominican ladies in general are bred to be sensual only with their husbands. This piece is a hallmark for how far I’ve come and still have yet to go, for identifying with my blackness is only the beginning, for an afro-dominicana.
Bio: H.M. Wolff, more commonly known as, Mercury Wolff, is an expressionist – pop – performance artist, storyteller, director of visual narratives & YouTuber from Miami. She uses YouTube to express herself to her most keen audience. Her time on stage, however, is used to transform people’s lives, inspire them at the least to go a little harder for what they want in life, for on stage, Mercury Wolff represents freedom, freedom of expression, thought, passion and most eye-catching of all, drive. To Mercury, she represents the type of dominicana you are not supposed to talk about: the forgotten, the neglected, the ones who have no platform to be themselves. They are who she appeals to the most. She wishes to free them all.
