"Still Life with Quilt and Drinking Gourds" directly references European and Dutch still life painting from the colonial era, a genre known as “memento mori” that pointed metaphorically to human mortality in a rich display of colonial plunder. Usually thought of as benign grouping of objects, the artist sees in these paintings stories of colonialism, ill-gotten gains and black labor. Often, the work incorporated images of black “servant boys,” just visible outside the frame deployed to serve as symbol of the European subject’s wealth. Such paintings express the paradoxical visibility and invisibility of black people within the European colonial world. In "Still Life with Quilt and Drinking Gourds," the artist explores how seemingly innocent objects can be used to tell a freighted story. The rich velvet ground enfolds histories and narratives within a space of blackness, unlinked from time and place. From a dimly lit background emerges a white-gloved hand draped with a quilt in lieu of the traditional liteau. Below, a silver platter is littered with drinking gourds, a star map, nautical telescope, rotting bananas and a photograph of Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura of the “Star Trek” television series. The tableau features objects used to navigate by the stars and to way-find, conjuring images of black migration and the Underground Railroad. The quilted waiter’s napkin suggests the patterned quilts used to signal safe houses along the Underground Railroad. It has been posited that specific messages were hidden in the geometry of these quilts. The pattern shown here was known as the “Lincoln platform,” developed in honor of President Lincoln’s inauguration. A portrait of Lieutenant Uhura from “Star Trek,” is featured in this painting alongside the gourds which symbolized the Big Dipper, a navigational device on the Underground Railroad. Nichelle Nichols' character first appeared on the series in 1966, and was ground breaking in many ways, most notably for the first on-screen interracial kiss. For the artist, she represents the furthest reaches of the Black imagination. In the face of a world which to this day tries to extinguish Black lives, Uhura showed us a future with a Black woman in charge.