Courtney Alexander

Claire Gilman: 
Listen to artist Courtney Alexander discuss the creation of her Dust II Onyx deck. 

Courtney Alexander: 
Hello, my name is Courtney Alexander and I'm a multimedia artist and creator of Dust II Onyx: A Melanated Tarot deck. I still chuckle when I think about me making a tarot deck. I grew up in a strict Christian household in a small conservative town. And so at one point I was a safe, sanctified, Holy Ghost filled teenager. And so tarot just wasn't in the cards for me. But when I began to deconstruct my own belief systems and upbringing, I came to tarot because I needed a tool that would help me to understand all of these new feelings and ideas and something that could help me see the patterns in my life and feel more empowered in my choices. When I looked for a physical deck, I noticed almost immediately that I couldn't find myself in any of them. 

There was very little representation of Black people and other marginalized identities. And what was available I learned wasn't created by Black artists. It was full of, you know, non-Black artists and even people going as far as to use pen names to give the sense that it was a Black artist involved. 

And so I decided that I would build the deck that I needed as someone with the lived experience that I was looking for in the art and the experience of using the deck. So I imagined an ancient civilization that holds all of our histories within it and I let that world speak through the cards. Each card is a painting and a record of Black life, history, culture, ancestry, and cosmology. It's rooted in the spirit of Blackness, the energy of Blackness, and the color story of Blackness even beyond our culture, one that's not based in fear or the assumption of darkness or evil, but is rich in an inheritance of wisdom and healing. 

Today, people are being asked and actually forced really to reckon with who they are, where they come from, and what they're carrying. And so tarot creates a container for that and having representation and image and language matters as we do that work individually and collectively. So I'm really proud to have created this work and I'm proud and grateful to be a part of tarot history.