Anika Love’s irruptive love-and-sorrows are channeled into visual and literary art which expose the unseen. Anika liberates the self from barring constructions of normalcy through her subversion of “proper” formulas. The expressionistic nature of her work is the unleashed burst of the—formerly—repressed voice. Drawing inspiration from the self possessed beauty of Nikki Giovanni—“I cannot be comprehended except by my permission”—Anika’s work is a raw reclamation of the self. Her poems rebel against the confines of social expectation as they unapologetically echo the aches, rages, and wants of the other, the objectified, and the unheard. Anika is currently studying at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan where she is painstakingly creating  against the grain!