Her Light Beams On Me

120 × 120 cm
Cardboard on wood with LED backlighting

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Her Light Beams On Me takes its title from a lyric by Common in Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop), his collaboration with Erykah Badu. The phrase speaks to hip hop not simply as a musical influence, but as an enduring source of inspiration and guidance. It is an acknowledgement of hip hop as both muse and methodology.

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The lyric is transformed into a sculptural text, hand cut from reclaimed cardboard and mounted over concealed LED lighting. The illuminated voids between the letters become as important as the material itself, allowing light to emerge through language and giving the phrase a quiet physical presence.

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Cardboard is central to the work. Once an industrial material with a practical purpose, it is quickly discarded once that purpose has been fulfilled. It exists in a cycle of utility, abandonment and reinvention. In this sense, it becomes both metaphor and metamorphosis.

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For me, the material reflects the origins of hip hop itself. During the 1970s, 80s and 90s, many young people in New York City were overlooked, under-resourced and undervalued by society. Rather than accepting those conditions, they transformed the materials, spaces and culture around them into something entirely new. Walls became canvases. Turntables became instruments. Streets became stages.

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The cardboard undergoes a similar transformation. A material considered to have little value is elevated into an object of contemplation, carrying both light and language.

The text itself is compressed until language becomes rhythm. The interlocking forms create a visual staccato that reflects the cadence of rap, where positive and negative space alternate like beats and rests. Echoing Miles Davis's belief that the notes you don't play are as important as those you do, the illuminated spaces become active participants in the work, allowing silence, light and absence to carry equal weight.

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AshWan