"Cockpit features a collection of assemblages that constrict, engage, and interact with the human body. I intentionally focused on amassing adornment and support for the penis as a means of reclamation and to counteract the sexually traumatized genes from our enslaved ancestors who were castrated, raped, or sodomized. In addition, we live in a society that continues to want to control or minimize the Black body to a delectable, fetish object so creating work confronting objecthood is therapeutic. I present an imaginative installation of found materials activated by BIPOC practitioners of kink play. When worn, the sculptures are armor-like and imperial looking, yet they obstruct and restrain the body much like the fetishization indicative of colonial rule, Eurocentrism, and fear regarding Black sexuality leading to Negrophilia and Negrophobia. I am interested in that tension. Each assemblage formed resembles an abstract experience I have had in fetish/kink play. Special thanks to my brothers of ONYX, a national BIPOC leather club who activated the work. By placing rings on our own cocks, Black queer males and others of color collectively reinvent figurative and literal shackles, reshape the narrative, and indelibly reversed the white gaze."

— Ajmal 'Mas Man' Millar