Monique Reneé Harris

Cocoa

My friend knows I love creating digital graphic images of broken mannequins. As a Black woman with a disability, I love taking these images of broken bodies and finding beauty in them. So when my friend saw a group of junk art mannequins on display at a closed gas station, he photographed them and sent me the pictures. I superimposed the split head of a robot onto the scarred head of a wig mannequin, creating a steampunk image of beauty and modernity.

Monique Reneé Harris was born as an African American woman with spastic cerebral palsy. Her artwork has been featured in Pentimento Magazine, Penumbra Online, Aji Magazine, Hey, I’m Alive Magazine, The Raw Art Review, Defunkt Magazine, Spoonie Press Literary Journal, and her poetry-art book Strength and Tragedy: The Mystery of the Blue Lady. She lives in Emeryville, California.