Qrescent Mali Mason

Qrescent Mali Mason is a Black feminist philosopher and phenomenologist interested in collective healing art practices centered in embodiment and self-referential pattern-tracing. An Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College and the current President of the International Simone de Beauvoir Society, Qrescent came to artistic practice through a frustration with her inability to ‘make sense’ of her thinking and lived experience via traditional philosophical argumentative methods. Influenced by Black women ‘thinker-artists’ like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Adrian Piper, Lorraine O’Grady, and her paternal Aunt Karen Marie Mason, “The Self-Translation Cycle” maps patterns of Black feminist healing in the face of past and present threats to Black women’s lives and well-being such as early illness, death, and perpetual state violence against Black folks. “The Self-Compassion Project,” the final work in a collaborative three-part collage and performance art installation, invites Black women in West Philadelphia to collaboratively annotate and map their own patterns of healing, asking them to consider themselves ‘thinker-artists.’