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      Using clips and accessible images from the internet, the appropriated piece, If A Girl Isn’t Pretty, responds to mass media’s conflicted portrayal of the Black woman by re-contextualizing the visual content that continues to define African-American women’s collective self-image today. The video addresses the irreconcilable demands placed upon the contemporary African-American woman by external representations that confront her in society and within her home. The looped piece exposes the issues that African-American women are subjected to in a collective clip edit arrangement that forces the viewer to stay engaged with the imagery. Reaching into a historic depth that spans over decades of pain, triumph, and representation creating an abstracted reproduction of the media’s portrayal of the Black female in American culture. By opening up once vulnerable wounds the work uses the visual medium as medicine and as a tool to dismantle history’s control over imminent images of the African-American woman.