Carving through wood, painting, and carefully placing grain into place to depict whole worlds of Black and African people, Prince De León is an artist who spends her time making art as a labor of love and a conversation with self. Together, the two of us revisit some of the most fruitful places in Philadelphia, a city that lives so fully in both of our hearts, and I got to learn about her art making process as a Liberian artist whose evolution, as a human, is solely connected to her art. 

We sit with a very important early work of hers--a piece called "African Booty Scratcher"--inspired by the book "Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto" by Legacy Russel, and influenced by Basquiat's style of self-portrait. As artists who speak from a place of truth and memory, it felt good to be in conversation with someone whose art making process is a dance with identity and memory; someone who can understand the inner workings imbedded into such a way of making.