Before creating this series, Jordan Rita Seruya Awori (JRSA) found herself in a moment of artistic dissonance—grappling with the weight of externally imposed labels: queer, African, Black, female, among others. These descriptors, though rooted in truth, began to feel restrictive, as if the art world sought to reduce her practice to a checklist of identities rather than allow it to expand on its own terms.

A turning point came during a conversation with a friend, who offered a perspective that quietly shifted the artist’s relationship with these labels: “Perhaps you should fully embrace them, not as limitations, but as integral parts of who you are. Instead of resisting, what if you flourished within them?” That moment reframed the tension, and from it emerged a new body of work—intimate and intentional.

The result was a series of postcards, each one inscribed with a personal message written in Swahili, signed from Jordan Awori to Rita Seruya—a symbolic exchange between parts of self. Each postcard embodied one of eight labels the artist chose to acknowledge: not as boundaries, but as sites of ownership, strength, and complexity. On her 35th birthday, while in Lisbon, JRSA mailed the postcards to herself. Seven arrived. One did not. The absence, like the arrival, became part of the story—a quiet gesture marking the ongoing journey of naming, claiming, and reimagining what it means to be multiple, and to belong to oneself.