GIRL WITH AN AMBER EARRING

I revisited Vermeer, not to mirror, but to reimagine.
Amber, worn by women of West and East Africa,
glows as a thread, connects individual to cosmic energy and universal soul
a symbol of solar pull, divine presence.

No longer backdrop or possession,
the Black figure steps forward, not hidden in the shadow but centered.
Not as ornament for highlighting the high status of their owners
but as power itself.

Their amber gleams not only in light, but in resistance, in the calm defiance of a gaze that says: “I am here. I have always been.”

Girls and women, vivid and unafraid, look back at us.
Presences carrying mystery, silence, truth.
Their stares call us to remember and to question:
What have we overlooked? Who was erased?

I bring them to the present, from servitude to sovereignty,
from silence to statement. Their emotions are their own: tender, fierce, solemn, alive.
Each image is a testament, a mirror of change.

A conversation with the Golden Age and its shadow.
its grandeur built on violence, Not to forget.

Amber replaces pearl. Various tones of blue and yellow surround the black skin tone.
Girls and women, alone or in group, invite us to reconsider, to feel transformed,
by presence.

Each gaze says: See me, I exist.