Using cut-paper and collage, Villalongo explores how to best represent the Black subject against the backdrop of race in America. Here, he defines anatomies through collaged images of geologic forms, meteorites, butterflies, drinking gourds, and African sculpture interspersed with leafy cut-outs. Combining images drawn from ecological and cultural histories, the artist emphasizes themes of deep time, navigation, beauty, and transformation. Drawing parallels to natural metamorphosis, Villalongo suggests an evolution of Black identity-a caterpillar emerges from its chrysalis to become a butterfly while rocks, compressed over millennia, transform to become crystals. By collapsing time and space through earthly and cosmic imagery, the artist calls attention to the fluctuating role of the Black figure. He studies and transmutes the Black image, underscoring liminality and transformation through his living motifs. The sensuous materiality and saturated color of the velvety black paper reinforces the experience and sensation of spirits rising from extreme darkness, confronting conditions of their visibility. The resulting scene interrogates the tentative space held by the Black body in contemporary society and throughout history and art, balancing loss and agency over the Black self-image.