"This self-portrait captures the layered reality of being a Black African immigrant, navigating between histories, expectations, and new beginnings. Half-immersed in collaged newspaper headlines, my figure emerges from a surface saturated with fragmented words like ""Welcome,"" ""Return,"" ""Just Kidding,"" and ""Black,"" reflecting the contradictions and complexities that shape the immigrant journey toward belonging. Torn, faded, and overlapping, the collage symbolizes the tension between visibility and erasure, hope and skepticism, acceptance and alienation.

The black lines streaking down the face act as silent witnesses to the emotional and physical journey of migration. They resemble tears, yet suggest deeper scars—marks from carrying the weight of history, culture, and personal transformation. These lines blur realism with abstraction, symbolizing how identity fragments under the pressures of displacement.

The gaze remains steady yet contemplative, hinting at a resilience forged through vulnerability and adaptation. The darkness enveloping the upper half of the face evokes both an uncertain future and the burden of an unerasable past. By blending realistic portraiture with the chaotic language of media, this work questions how immigrant narratives are constructed, consumed, and internalized—and invites viewers to reconsider whose stories are told, and whose voices remain unheard."