A Dark & Divine Experience
EAT MY FLESH
On the Consumption of Black Bodies
Artist and curator Dasia Hood unveils her new multi-disciplinary project that explores the chocolate industry as a metaphor for the systematic consumption of Black bodies in all aspects of life and love.
Dark & Divine™: Eat My Flesh is a powerful commentary on the exploitation embedded within the global chocolate supply chain. It explores the intersections of art, labor, and human rights. The project brings into focus the harrowing reality of child labor and slavery in West African cocoa farms, the very children whose labor is the hidden cost of the sweet treat many take for granted.
Introduction
Eat my flesh—this has always been the demand. From the plantations to the factory lines, Black bodies have been harvested, processed, and consumed, wrapped in gold foil and sold as indulgence. Chocolate, a symbol of luxury and desire, carries within it a history of extraction—of land, of labor, of life itself.
And yet, I love chocolate—the way it lingers on the tongue, the way it soothes, the way it feels like a small respite in a world that takes so much. It is a pleasure so effortless, so accessible, that it is easy to forget the hands that never taste what they harvest, the bodies reduced to labor, the histories buried beneath sweetness.
Dark & Divine™ will one day be an artisanal chocolate experience, a reclamation of taste and truth. But before I can create, I must confront. To craft without reckoning would be to ignore the bitter reality infused into every bite.
Join me in an exploration of the ways Black flesh has been exploited through the global chocolate industry. In following my artistic process, I invite you to witness the unseen, to taste the truth, and to reconsider the cost of what melts so easily in your mouth.
The title Eat My Flesh was inspired by the haunting words of a cacao worker featured in Slavery: A Global Investigation (2000), directed by Brian Woods and Kate Blewett of True Vision TV:
“They enjoyed something I suffered to make; I worked hard for them, but saw no benefit. They are eating my flesh.”
These words are not just a metaphor; they are a testimony, a call to confront the brutal reality behind two of the world’s most beloved indulgences: the body and chocolate.
Photography by CHD:WCK!
RAISING LOCAL AWARENESS
Divine Chocolate Collaboration
Dark & Divine™ teams up with Divine Chocolate USA and Beyond Amazing Donuts Charlotte to create the ultimate indulgence: a chocolate sour cherry donut. The limited-edition donut will be available at Beyond Amazing Donuts from February 18 to March 2025 to raise awareness about the exploitation of Black bodies in the cacao Industry.
The donut glaze is made with Divine Chocolate and topped with a whipped chocolate ganache and sour cherry filling. Every bite supports and uplifts the culture locally and beyond!
Art After Dark | Tasting Her Words
March 14, 2025 | 9 p.m. at the Harvey B. Gantt Center
"Dark & Divine™: Tasting Her Words" pairs poetry and pleasure through a chocolate-tasting session that takes participants on a sensory experience of Black women creatives, including Solange Knowles, Ntozake Shange, and more.
The workshop, led by Dasia Hood, opens with a welcome and intention-setting. Hood shares the inspiration to honor Black women poets and lyricists by indulging in chocolate—the muses of the mind and tongue. Taste and poetry merge to explore themes of resilience, creativity, and sensuality while bringing mindfulness to indulgence through an ethical chocolate tasting paired with poems by Black women.
CRAFTING THE NARRATIVE:
“LABOR”
HER LABOR OF LOVE
As a Black woman, my personal narrative in this series emerges from the vulnerable intersections of love and motherhood.
This haunting truth speaks to Black women’s relationship with labor: how dark-skinned women are expected to work harder, to endure more, and how even our children are seen as laborers in waiting. It speaks to the labor of love itself. It is a relentless giving, often met without protection, recognition, or grace.
My plea to the world is this:
“Being loved feels like being eaten alive.”
There is a generational curse in the way we labor for love and life, a cycle that must be broken. The collective consumes us, indulging in our sweetness, but rarely reckoning with the cost. They taste our honey, but ignore the wounds it takes to make it.
Virtuous Woman (2025): A Visual Story
Directed and photographed by Wild Recluse
Models: Haikoo, Dasia Hood, Jason Dawkins
Location: Free Spirit Farm, Huntersville, NC
“There’s a story here…,” Wild Recluse whispered to us one wild day as Dark & Divine wandered the fields of Free Spirit Farm, where the lush greenery cradled secrets of a forgotten past. The air was damp with potential, infused by inspiration that flowed from the earth beneath us. The Afro-dystopian love story we crafted features the enchanting Dasia Hood, the ethereal Haikoo, and the mysterious Jason Dawkins, each embodying facets of a narrative that seeks to confront and celebrate the complex tapestry of Black existence.
Through sacred surrealism, we wield the process of chocolate, often associated with Black skin, pleasure, and indulgence, as a performative metaphor, inviting reflections on the consumption of our bodies and the labor that underpins Black identity. Chocolate, rich and dark, becomes a symbol of both desire and exploitation, urging us to ponder the dichotomy of pleasure derived from pain.
Virtuous Woman (2025) serves as a pivotal point in this exploration, articulating the profound connection between land and the labor of Black love; an echo of sacrifice, a vow of protection, and an act of reclamation. She stands, dignified, in the sweet embrace of the earth, a reminder that our stories are rooted in resilience. Here, in the heart of Free Spirit Farm, we lay bare the visceral nuances of our truths, melding beauty with urgency.
Soul Work
EAT MY FLESH delves into the sacred alignment of work as an expression of devotion to the feminine principle, intertwined with reverence for Mother Earth. Dasia Hood dedicates herself to crafting quarterly digital editions of the Dark & Divine Journal. She elevates the voices of women engaged in soulful, transformative labor through her meticulously curated interview series, “Sensual & Sovereign.”
Machetes & Melanin
The narrative of Machetes & Melanin weaves a unique tapestry for Dark & Divine’s EAT MY FLESH series, using the chocolate-making process as a metaphor to explore themes of labor and consumption.
"We're currently immersing ourselves in the Earth, laying the foundation for chocolate-making, which begins with the cacao bean harvest. The chocolate industry is marred by unethical practices, and through storytelling, we illuminate how our insatiable need to consume shapes our choices in work, life, and love." Hood envisions transforming this narrative into a book and TV series.
The TV series is in the planning phase, with filming scheduled for Spring/Summer 2026.