We were lucky to catch up with Tiff Mcfierce recently and have shared our conversation below.
Tiff, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
This is my first-ever art show, my debut solo exhibition as a multidisciplinary artist in the gallery space. I’ve never done this before. I’m not a traditionally trained artist, but I’ve been ideating, studying, and building toward this for a decade. You CAN Sit Here is more than just an exhibition; it’s a homecoming, a reflection, and an offering. This installation reimagines the living room, a space that holds so much history in Black, Caribbean, & POC households, as both a site of cultural preservation and a place to question what we’ve inherited.
The backstory of this project is deeply personal. I grew up seeing spaces, like my grandmother’s living room, that were designed more for show than for sitting. Beautiful, curated, but carrying an unspoken rule of hesitation and restriction. That shaped so much for me in how I understood space, tradition, and even my own hesitations in life. At the same time, I watched the women in my family and community effortlessly curate beauty, build homes, and hold everything together, often without recognition. Black women are the backbones of culture, and yet the spaces they create can sometimes become cages of expectation rather than places of rest and liberation.
This project has been nearly two years in the making and is my first full-scale installation exhibition. It weaves together my background as a DJ, curator, and writer to create an immersive sensory experience that brings people into a space of memory, reflection, and transformation. It challenges us to think about what we carry forward, what we release, and how we find sovereignty within our own stories.
At its core, You CAN Sit Here is about reclaiming space physically, emotionally, and generationally. It’s meaningful to me because it’s an extension of my personal journey of unlearning restriction, stepping into my own voice, and recognizing that we are the next ancestors, actively shaping the future.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m Tiff McFierce, a Bronx-born, New York City native with Jamaican roots, and a multidisciplinary artist, DJ, curator, writer, and wellness advocate. My work dissects and empowers perceptions, championing self-trust, embodied liberation, and deepened awareness through sound, movement, and storytelling. I create immersive experiences that invite people to question inherited narratives, reconnect with themselves, and engage with the world in more expansive ways. My intention through my practice, offerings, and art is to encourage not only self-awareness but also a deeper sense of communal care, reinforcing the ways we support, uplift, and create space for one another.
I’ve spent over 13 years shaping soundscapes and immersive experiences as a DJ and music director, while also becoming the first woman/first Black woman music director and resident DJ in the NBA and WNBA at Madison Square Garden for eight years. I have DJed, curated, written for, and spoken at major events, festivals, publications, and institutions, using sound and storytelling to create transformative experiences on global stages. As a multidisciplinary artist, I create spaces that merge sound, movement, and visual storytelling, expanding how we experience memory, culture, and personal transformation.
Music, movement, and creativity have always been my first languages. I trained as a dancer since the age of four and worked as a professional dancer for most of my life, with an overlapping of professional careers, and was known as the #DancingDJ. Although retired for a decade professionally, dance remains central to my artistic and spiritual practices, as well as my creative expression. Movement is my love language, just like sound, music, and frequency. It connects me to my body, voice, intuitive downloads, and my ability to translate emotion into something tangible. My approach to art, sound, and healing was born from this deep relationship with movement and dance and music are intertwined in everything I create.
My debut solo art exhibition, You CAN Sit Here, is a culmination of that evolution. Developed over nearly two years, this immersive installation transforms the living room into a space where cultural memory and reimagination meet. Inspired by my childhood living room where beauty and restriction coexisted, it explores ancestral storytelling, sovereignty, and the ways Black women shape legacy through care, creation, and quiet resistance. As a Bronx-born Jamaican artist, this work reflects the duality of preservation and transformation that exists within diasporic identity—how we honor what’s been passed down while creating new space for ourselves, leaving behind traditions and maladaptive mindsets that hold us back from full expression without guilt or shame.
I am also the founder of Look IN, a wellness brand and collective that blends movement, sound, and mindfulness to create transformative experiences. Look IN turns seven on March 17th, just three days before my exhibition opens at Casita Maria Gallery on March 20th. I’ve been curating and hosting community events and gatherings for two decades, and our three pillars at Look IN, music, movement, and meditation extend into everything I create. It was born from my own continuous journey of building spaces where I see a lack of real intersectionality, access, and creativity in existing just as we are.
I also hold space through my podcast, This Is Ongoing, where I explore neuroplasticity, self-care, and personal transformation through the lens of creativity, life lessons, and sound. I offer 1-on-1 work, reminding people they are capable of self guidance through deep self care and creative practices that help them shift their mindset, reconnect with their inner voice, and reimagine what is possible for them. These offerings aren’t separate from my art, they are extensions of it, ways to open up conversations and experiences that deepen self-trust and embodiment.
Art, music, and movement have always been more than just mediums for me; they are ways of knowing, remembering, and carving out space where we can fully exist. Through my work, I explore what it means to unlearn indoctrination, trust ourselves, and reimagine the ways we live in the world, and what we accept from it. Some of that looks like sound and storytelling, some of it looks like dance and stillness, and some of it looks like the spaces I create, where people can pause, reflect, and feel themselves deeply and without hesitation.
As an emerging multidisciplinary artist, I’ve embodied the understanding that creativity isn’t meant to fit inside a single structure, and neither are we. My debut exhibition, You CAN Sit Here, is a reminder of breaking old blueprints that no longer serve us, honoring what does and those that came before us to lay that ground work, while making space for something new, and celebrating the joy of our being, as is.
You ARE the special occasion.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson I had to unlearn was waiting for “permission.” I have always been a disruptor, a starter, and someone who moves first, creating what I didn’t see happening. But I also internalized the idea that I had to be chosen, validated by an industry, a gatekeeper, or a certain level of external success before fully stepping into my artistry and my voice. Even with my self-efficacy and bravery, I subconsciously hoarded a lot of my work, hesitating to take my next step unless some form of external validation or “safety” appeared. I’ve done a lot of emdigging in the shadows to see where that came from, and lot of it was the experiences of trauma. While valid it’s also stifling to live by just those experiences. I was waiting for someone to tell me when to go, but I ain’t E-40.
What led me out of this was root work. Work on my root chakra, my throat chakra, lifting up all the rugs and sitting with and feeling through the things, whether I put them there or not. And whatever wasn’t mine? I stopped carrying bags I didn’t pack. I often felt like I had to prove I was “ready,” smart enough, or simply enough before fully stepping into anything, including my artistry and my voice. Reclaiming my body and relearning how to feel safe in it made taking a small step, even while scared, possible. It’s a living practice I show up to daily.
The backstory of this lesson runs deep. Growing up, especially as a Black Caribbean woman, there’s an ingrained expectation of worthiness being tied to external validation, humility to the point of self-sacrifice, and creativity being something you can express, but only within certain acceptable limits. That mindset bled into my career, where I’d see people with less experience move forward simply because they believed they belonged in the room, while I hesitated, refining and perfecting, waiting for the “right” moment.
Unlearning that has been an ongoing practice, but the biggest shift came when I realized: I don’t need permission to create. I don’t need permission to take up space. I don’t need permission to evolve. The only validation I truly need is my own.
That shift is why You CAN Sit Here exists. It’s my debut solo exhibition, but it’s also a statement—an invitation for others to step into their own becoming without waiting for approval. It’s about breaking those inherited blueprints, honoring what serves us, and leaving behind what doesn’t. I had to unlearn restriction to reclaim my creative sovereignty, and now I hold space for others to do the same.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
If we’re talking about what society can do to support artists and creatives, the real answer is stop expecting society to do it before we do. Their arbitrary but intentionally oppressive systems weren’t built for us to live naturally and thrive. Their structures weren’t designed to sustain us. And while we can and will push for change, another powerful thing we can do is stop waiting for permission, validation, or an invitation to move forward until things “change.”
Artists, creatives, and those who move between multiple disciplines have always built in the in-between spaces. The ones who thrive are the ones who understand that true creative sovereignty comes from trusting yourself, knowing your own needs, and aligning with the right people, not waiting for the wrong ones to change.
Moving with clarity and intentionality about where you put your energy while radically accepting that not everyone is ready or willing to let go of indoctrination and marginalization helps guide next steps. Even within the self, when you can spot the ways you’re not ready to change and give yourself grace and move on to the next small step, you can find yourself circling the block ready to release what you thought you couldn’t. But it takes movement over stagnation, redirected energy over beating a dead horse with judgement. Some things just don’t need any more long talking if what’s being said is purposely being unheard, or just can’t be listened to yet. The focus now has to be on building what sustains us across paths. This includes looking at the self and letting go of what holds you back individually so you can show up as your creative and bold self, collectively.
My debut exhibition, You CAN Sit Here exists because of this. Because breaking old blueprints, reclaiming space, and honoring what truly sustains us requires both individual and collective shifts.
So if we’re talking about support, let’s start there: self-trust, creative choice, and alignment over appeasement.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tiffmcfierce/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/tiffmcfierce
- Other: Tik tok https://www.tiktok.com/@tiffmcfierce
Substack https://tiffmcfierce.substack.com/
This Is Ongoing Podcast spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3T7YSznNvTvqZogvkM2JhL?si=221aedd01a9846bf
This Is Ongoing Podcast apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-is-ongoing/id1762924612
Image Credits
Tiff McFierce/Massiel Ventura
Vonecia Carswell
Stephen Lane
Nicholas Bailey