Description
Dust II Onyx: A Melanated Tarot is a rich, complex, multi-layered deck created by multimedia artist Courtney Alexander. The deck explores cultural myths, symbolism, history, and icons within the Black Diaspora.
Now available as smaller, ‘travel sized’ deck!
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. Each card has been carefully researched with nearly 75 resources cited, providing a wealth of educational material.
Contents:
- Full 78-card gold foil-accented deck, cards measuring 2.75″ x 4″, plus one additional scrying card
- Simple keyword booklet
- Deck and booklet presented together in a sturdy two-piece keepsake box
