Dust II Onyx: A Melanated Tarot

Courtney Alexander's Dust II Onyx arrived through a landmark 2017 crowdfunding campaign as a mixed-media celebration of the Black Diaspora: collaged, gold-foiled, painterly cards that rebuilt tarot's cast and symbols from Black history, culture and iconography. The record notes its standing as a landmark widely distributed deck by a Black creator, and its influence exceeded even that: it opened the door commercially for the wave of diaspora-centered decks that followed, and it remains the reference point they get measured against. The deck reads as art-forward and layered, each card dense with material and reference, rewarding slow looking the way collage always does. Its register is dignity and depth rather than affirmation-card lightness. It suits readers centering Black imagery and experience in their practice, collectors of the contemporary canon's pivotal decks, mixed-media art lovers, and anyone tracing how crowdfunding rebuilt tarot publishing in the 2010s. It has earned its place in the tradition's permanent record.