Description
Note: These beautiful decks all suffered a small bump in transit, which means the boxes are not 100% perfect. Decks in this batch each have a small (and we do mean very small!) ding on the corner of the box. We have discounted £10 from the normal price to reflect this.
Dust II Onyx: A Melanated Tarot is a rich, complex, multi-layered deck created by multimedia artist Courtney Alexander, first published in 2016. The deck explores cultural myths, symbolism, history, and icons within the Black Diaspora.
About the original painting series, Courtney writes:
“My current series of paintings “From Dust to Onyx” uses tarot as an avenue to visually explore the rich and complex layers of Blackness. The series contains 78 paintings created through mixed media collage, layering materials from paper clippings to sand and glitter. These applications are a way of exploring the intersections of Black identity while featuring historical facts, cultural myths, traditions, symbolism, and icons throughout the Black Diaspora.
I collect the shards of my own identity as a black/fat/queer woman and piece them into a mosaic of works that present blackness as universal spirit – in contrast to the idea of whiteness and light that formed a wedge between my personal experience of higher consciousness and ancestral connection.
Using mixed media collage, I explore the complexities of blackness as a human experience and as a color story wrought with negative connotations. In turn, I re-imagine a timeless world that feels deeply ancient yet intrinsically intertwined in this modern realm, birthed from a a place of nothingness that is also simultaneously everything. A non-binary world where I see myself, reflections of blackness, and darkness, as powerful and eternal.”
Read Asali’s interview with Courtney from the deck’s original publication in 2016.
The cards feature 78 mixed media collage paintings accented with metallic and holographic foils, featuring cultural myths, symbolism, history, and icons within the Black Diaspora. The guidebook features multiple keyword lists (numerological, elemental, and astrological) and full-color images of the artwork with unique titles and art descriptions. Each card has been carefully researched with nearly 75 resources cited, providing a wealth of educational material.
This is the second edition of the full-sized deck and guidebook. A travel-sized edition and guidebook are also available.
Contents:
- Full 78-card gold foil-accented deck
- Hard-cover 200+ page guide book Packaged in a lidded box
- Deck and book presented together in a beautiful keepsake box
How does this second edition differ from the first?
- New designer packaging with hinge-lid box
- Improvements to Dust II Onyx: Vade Mecum (guidebook)
- New artwork for the hard-cover
- Additional tarot card (in place of the blank card)
