UNBOUND: A Visual Study on the Nature of Freedom

Monkey D. Luffy is my hero. What I've learned from studying this character is his unwavering commitment to his Ikigai, his reason for being, and his practice of Ubuntu, our shared humanity.

For Luffy and me, freedom is not a fixed destination. It is a process of discovering how UNBOUND we can actually be in the midst of life's trials and tribulations.

What does freedom look like when it is about requiring less, not obtaining more?

Through three distinct experiences in Kenya in 2019 and 2020, I wrestled with who freedom is for, and what it truly costs to live UNBOUND.

In Kajiado County, with a Maasai family, masterful shepherds. A city boy from Germantown saw the Milky Way for the first time and envisioned himself free. This is Freedom of Spirit.

In Kibera, the largest informal settlement in East Africa, freedom is improvised daily, born from imagination before it becomes anything else. This is Freedom of Mind.

In Lamu, an ancient Swahili island moving at its own unhurried pace, the weight of identity that is so consistently carried in the United States lifted completely. This is Freedom of Body.

Three landscapes. Three expressions of the same question. One question that belongs as much to Philadelphia as it does to Kenya.
I am not yet UNBOUND, but I am becoming. The exhibition welcomes you to pose this question to yourself: What could freedom look like in your life, when it is not about acquiring more, but requiring less?

Perhaps we can provide answers to a nation that for 250 years has wrestled with the same question.

~ Steven CW Taylor ~