07/12/2025
“This was never just a dream. It was a mirror.”
A mirror they tried to keep cracked, dusty, and out of reach.
But now… it reflects.
This image isn’t just a photo.
It’s me looking back through generations.
Looking up to God.
And looking within, toward everything they tried to make us forget.
GEES BEND: WELCOME TO THE HOLE is more than a short documentary. It’s a spiritual unveiling. A cinematic squint into the sacred dirt of Gee’s Bend, Alabama; where homes like the one behind me held voices, quilts, prayers, and names that helped shape American history.
The Pettways. The Bendolphs. The creative resistance of the Black South.
My family. My blood. My canvas.
This project reveals how the blood in my veins is the paint on my canvas.
It shows how the HOLE shaped the whole of who I am as an artist, and as a man carrying the legacy of a revolutionary lineage.
We are the descendants of vision.
And what was once buried is now being uncovered, in full color.
Poem by XSAVIOR PETTWAY
“REFLECTIONS IN THE MIRROR THEY NEVER WANTED US TO HAVE TO TRULY CEE OURSELVES”
They handed us cracked glass
hoping we’d only see pieces
But we stitched reflections in silence
threaded truths in every creasis
They burned the maps but not the memory
buried names but not the flame
Now the mirror stands in full view
and every shard spells out our name
Coming soon.
