Courtney Alexander is a multimedia artist, creative director, and writer with a Bachelor’s in Studio Art from the University of South Florida. In her past work she dug into issues of duality, hyper sexuality, and self-awareness; a much more personal dialogue which served to create vulnerability and explore the complex nature of her existence. Her paintings and sculptures are abstract and experimental, allowing for a more tactile sensory experience. The Dust II Onyx Tarot Deck is a natural progression in her exploration of identity and her largest project to date. Her next mission is to create a publishing platform that caters to minority and marginalized artists who desire to create uplifting and educational products for their communities.

Courtney’s current series, Dust II Onyx, uses tarot divination to merge the multitude of intersections within black culture. She says she was inspired by my own spiritual journey deconstructing, decolonizing and disconnecting from my Christian heteropatriarchal foundations.

“As an African-American unable to trace my ancestry beyond a few decades, this work has helped me gather the shards of my identity that once felt scattered. I felt conflicted about jumping into other African spiritual traditions within the diaspora to find myself. I wanted to be conscious of my desire to appropriate traditions without forethought to how they connected to my own cosmology—considering the thousands of ethnic groups that exist within this expansive continent that is my soul’s original home.”