ARTIST STATEMENT

The Burden We Carry is a sculptural study of generational weight—an examination of how history, violence, and resilience imprint themselves onto the body. Each piece is shaped in the likeness of stone: heavy, grounded, unignorable. And yet, these forms are functional, meant to be worn, held, lived with.

The metaphor is intentional. For African Americans, the burden did not begin with us. It traces back to the first ships, to stolen names and severed histories. It lives in Jim Crow and redlining, in cultural erasure, in the quiet harm of microaggressions, in the exhaustion of bending yourself to survive systems never built for your flourishing.

These stones represent inherited silence and unspoken grief—but also ingenuity, endurance, and self-definition. They illustrate how weight shapes posture, alters trajectory, and becomes a language across generations.

By rendering these burdens as sculptural leather objects—designed not to immobilize but to carry—Joseph Roi reframes the narrative. The weight remains, but the relationship to it changes. What once constrained becomes a vessel. What once anchored becomes a tool for forward motion.

This collection is not about overcoming burden. It is about owning its truth, preserving its memory, and honoring the generations who carried far heavier loads than we will ever fully comprehend.

The pieces—rough, carved, polished—mark a progression: not from burden to freedom, but from raw struggle to refined presence. Each object asks: What do we carry? What carried us? And how do we move with the weight, rather than away from it?