Twin Magic Unveiled: Hope and Faith's Interdisciplinary Collaborative Journey

The Truth In This Art is an interview series featuring artists, entrepreneurs and tastemakers in & around Baltimore.

D.C. born, Hyattsville raised twins Eleisha Faith McCorkle & Tonisha Hope McCorkle hold BFA’s from New York University in Studio Art, with minors in Social & Cultural Analysis and Psychology, respectively. Individually, one is skilled in drawing, printmaking, and digital art while the other is a painter and ceramicist. They combined artistic qualities in their first solo show, “OUR SKIN, OUR LOGO.” Since then, they have decided to come together, forming an interdisciplinary collaborative. Formerly enrolled in the Visual and Performing Arts program at the Jim Henson School of Arts, Media, and Communication in Hyattsville, Maryland, the pair have been curating, studying, and creating art since they were 13. At the age of 17, the twins lost their mother to the rare lung condition of Sarcoidosis. From then on, the two have used their art as a space of healing, creating immersive experiences that engage with loss, grief, identity, hope, and faith. Depicting their experiences, their work speaks to the candid, yet uncanny truth of black life, while simultaneously severing from a cyclical narrative deeply rooted in pain and disenfranchisement. Collard greens, hair, and faith are some relics represented in their work. Sourced from their own lives, the pair began to see their worlds collide as they grew into a new state of consciousness as one, traveling multiple dimensions in their work and conflating the ideas of reconstruction and resilience. Their work serves as a spiritual process towards completion–utilizing 2D, 3D, and 4D elements as puzzle pieces to form the bigger picture. Deconstructing materials in their practice, the dynamic duo reconstructs narratives through veracious and symbolic imagery to communicate stories of black life, food, rituals, healing, spirituality, and magic. Currently, the twins live and work in Baltimore, MD. They find inspiration in their everyday activities; spending time reconnecting with family, teaching the youth, raising plants, drinking water, cooking, meditating, and charging in the sun. When getting creative, the two take time to research, write, and reflect on their experiences in order to immerse themselves in their process. The pair has been honored with a 2022 residency with Creative Alliance in Baltimore and have their first solo show as a formal collective coming in November in their hometown of Hyattsville, MD.