'They will know you by your Fruit' was a collaborative effort created by myself (Monika Estrella Negra) and Valerie Bah, in Montreal QC in 2017. We wanted to explore the effects of violence on Black women's bodies using horror as a discipline. Horror is my obsession, and I love to dissect the every day horrors I face on a daily basis. Not too long ago, I had an abortion. I had tried to call the father before I went in to the abortion, and he did not answer. That was the loneliest I have ever felt. I don't think he did it on purpose - but when I brought it up, during a 'closure' conversation - he told me I that I was laying the guilty heavy. How many times have black women - or women in general, been silenced because of someone's inability to hear the truth? My truths? Our truths? I'd like to think that many Black women that have had to go through similar situations, often feel the same. I did this photo series shortly after that hellish and alienating experience. This photo series in particular doesn't just focus on my personal experience with anti-blackness, misogynoir and fertility. But on a collected series of transgenerational traumas shared by women and femmes in the Black diaspora. We do the daily work of harming ourselves in order to make others feel safe. We swallow the bitter pills in hopes of keeping the peace, or waiting for the storms to pass over us. There is a quote by Audre Lorde, that fits perfectly with this. 'I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you....What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.'
