Keepsake.

Keepsake explores the quiet moments that shape Black childhood, family, and community, moments often overlooked because of their ordinary nature. Through collage, Omari Jesse reassembles fragments of photographs and memory to honor the spaces where identity is formed: living rooms, front porches, family gatherings, neighborhood streets, and the everyday rituals that teach us who we are.

The recurring presence of children in the work reflects not only innocence, but inheritance: how love, humor, resilience, and cultural traditions are passed from one generation to the next through daily acts of care and togetherness.

Each collage functions as a keepsake, a vessel for memory that preserves experiences both deeply personal and widely shared. Rather than romanticizing the past, the work recognizes the value of ordinary moments that often go undocumented or unseen. By elevating these intimate scenes, Keepsake honors the lives, relationships, and histories carried within them, a reminder that what we choose to preserve ultimately shapes what, and how, we remember.