Red Son Digital Video 2021. Color 3 minutes
Black girls’ tears fall continually, relentlessly onto the concrete. The tools of femaleness are not effective when you are a little black girl. The work is how a little black girl connects to a robot-boy super hero, born out of the horror of the Atomic bomb.
nightfall Digital Video 2022. Color 3 minutes
She lay in bed on a summer evening, terrified by a lightning storm. She remembered waking to flashes of white light illuminating her bedroom. Her mother told her a tale about her father and how he conquered lightening.
afterall Digital Video 2022 Color 3 minutes
in the house, waiting / waiter
SUPERNOVA Digital Video 2021 3:23 minutes
the performative splendor of the slam dunk in the face of eminent death.
NO SOIL BETTER: ART AND THE LIVING LEGACY OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Exhibition Dates: Feb. 2 - March 18, 2018 opening: Feb. 2 6-8pm
Curator: Bleu Cease
No Soil Better is an exhibition of new artworks by a diverse group of emerging and established artists. The featured projects reflect on how Douglass has been memorialized and the importance of his legacy today. This exhibition is presented as part of the Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commemoration Committee organized by Rochester Community Media Center (RCTV) and RoCo.
Shine A Light on Douglass is organized by RIT’s Big Shot team. Join us in Highland Park to help Rochester celebrate Frederick Douglass’ birth and create an important archival photo of the Douglass Monument (1899) by Sidney W. Edwards.
Rochester Contemporary Art Center, 137 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14604
SEEN AND HEARD - EVERSON MUSEUM OF ART
June 10 – August 27, 2017
Seen and Heard: An Active Commemoration of Women’s Suffrage, Curator; DJ Hellerman
Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the passage of women’s suffrage in New York State, Seen and Heard explores the use of the arts as a catalyst for social change and features the work of nine contemporary artists as well as several works from the Everson’s collection.
Artists include:
Mildred Beltré, Yvonne Buchanan, Cassils, Lionel Cruet, Stella Marrs, Jessica Posner, Jessica Putnam-Phillips, Kevin Snipes, Holly Zausner
POLARIS (THE NORTH STAR)
An installation for Harriet Tubman 2017
Ceramic head, wooden ladder, digital video, wood bench ( from City Woods Mill)
Project Statement:
Polaris ( The North Star) is an installation of a re-imagined life of Harriet Tubman, who parted ways with the suffragette movement when it narrowed its focus to equality only for white women, and dropped issues of race and class. Using archival footage of early suffragette marches and a collection of Blaxploitation films of the 1970’s the video is a wandering, and a victory. A sentinel, a massive ceramic head atop a thin ladder, adorned with “satellites” as crown, a futurist head dream, as representation of the celestial, presides over all.
BOÎTE-EN-VALISE: GENERATOR; EXCHANGES THROUGH PERFORMATIVITY AND PRACTICE
JESUS : AT ODDS
Six established, mid-career and emerging artists from England and USA - in collaboration with three curators and audiences in Portsmouth, England - are developing new work for transport and presentation in Venice, Italy and Syracuse, USA. Audiences in Portsmouth will have an authorship in international presentations shared by social media.
The artists are Yvonne Buchanan (USA), Mia Delve (UK), Tom Hall (UK/USA), Mika Mollenkopf (USA), Harold Offeh (UK), Susan Stockwell (UK).
Curators: Joanne Bushnell (UK) Mark Segal (UK), and Stephanie James (USA).
New Work on View: Preview Week at 57th Venice Biennale, Portsmouth England & Syracuse, NY
6 & 7 May 2017 16.00h-18.00h Artists Event
Aspex Gallery
The Vulcan Building
Gunwharf Quays
Portsmouth PO1 38F
10 & 11 May 2017 10am-8pm
57th Venice Biennale Exhibition
Rio Terra San Vio
Dorsoduro 453
Venezia
October 19- December 9, 2017
Point of Contact Gallery
School of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse University
Syracuse NY, US
Opening: Thursday, October 19th 6-8pm, Talk/seminar Friday, October 20th 1-3pm , live stream in Aspex Gallery, Portmouth, UK
DARK MATTERS
4 channel digital video and sound 2016 6 minutes color
Nature Study is a video of young men of color in nature, parks and lakes. The powerless of that population doesn’t have access to effective advocates, The national discussion around race and public spaces informs this work. Young men of color are absent from a society that has been set up to trap them, and harshly punish them for small offenses. The video highlights the subjects being in a kind of Simulacra nature, framed and organized as landscape, where their bodies are seen as foreign and dangerous.
Sound is piped in from a recording mike located near the Columbia River close to the Columbia River Correctional Facility. The length of the video, 6 minutes, will loop for 90 minutes; the time it takes to walk from the correctional facility to the Disjecta Contemporary Art Center.
screening: Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland, OR December , 2015
Spoken Digital Video 2012-2014 Color/silent 6 minutes
The video shows an example of the lost language of Africans in America, the tribal voice, the clicks and rolls of the tongue… eventually evolving through enslavement, and finally lost to English.The lost language of Africans in America, the tribal voice, the clicks and rolls of the tongue… eventually evolving through enslavement, and finally lost to English.
Screenings: Dark Matter. LLewelyen Art Gallery, Alfred State College Nov/ Into Blackness, Real Art Ways, Hartfort Ct, April -June 2015 / TONY Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY
IN COURT (BASKETBALL)
Digital Video 2012 Color/silent 13.13 minutes
The piece in Court features a basketball court, where the hopes and dreams of young black men are played out, at the same time as it seems to fluctuate between a site for sport and a cage. The projection of the piece at the UVP Everson Museum venue, with its close proximity to the Onondaga County jail, takes on a special and literal resonance with the audible but invisible play of the inmates on the rooftop court of the correctional facility.
screenings: Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland OR December 11-December 20, 2015, Urban Video Project./Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY Feb 27 through May 1, 2013, 5th Rochester-Fingerlakes Biennial Exhibition, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 2012,
VISITATION
2010 Single channel video w/sound 5.30 minutes
2014 set of 9 digital prints mounted on Aluminum under plexiglass 20 x 14 inches
A polygon serves as a surrogate for the black body, representing a lifeless form or an alien presence. The color shifting shape travels over a variety of natural environments, occasionally interrupted by industrial structures. The polygon moves into a dream state, an afterlife, and then a void that renews its vibrancy. The work is a fictive narrative of African- American experience.
The Ghost, The Animal Digital Video 2012 Color/sound 6 minutes
This piece borrows the characters of Bronte’s Jane Eyre, utilizing images informed by Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and explores a measure of “acceptable” womanhood.
Twinkle Digital Video 2012 Color/sound 4.9 minutes
Lincoln Perry, the African American actor better known as "Stepin Fetchit" made a fortune playing a common stereotype of black males of the 1930's. The video makes a simple statement about his family's well being, and seeks understanding and forgiveness for the choices made under duress. While acting to perpetuate damaging perceptions of the African American Community, Perry's participation created opportunities for his family to prosper.
screening: TONY: The Other New York, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY
Progression 2009 Single channel video w/sound 9 minutes
The work concerns color, light and motion, with a submerged narrative about Mark Rothko.
screenings: 62nd Central New York Exhibition, Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica NY
Practice 2009 Single channel video w/sound 5 minutes
With apologizes to Booker T. Washington, this work explores African-American striving within a culture that does not value them.
screenings: TONY: The Other New York, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY/ Currents New Media, Santa Fe, NM
Strange Tongue 2008 Single channel video w/sound 3 minutes
In “Strange Tongue: a well- known American gospel song by Mahalia Jackson is altered. All associations to the lyrics have been excised, leaving a wordless voice, emphasizing the expression of sorrow and hope. The black screen underscores the inexpressible grief and resilience of Black Americans throughout history, and the experience of lynching in particular.
Territories 2008 Single channel video w/sound 5 minutes sound by Ben Emil Johnston
This piece concerns the act of looking, and being observed, using crows in their environment as a metaphor for ideas about privacy and surveillance in contemporary life. Crows have historically been a symbol of black people in Southern US culture.
screenings: TONY Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY
Slippage 2008 Single channel video w/sound 5 minutes
The footage for this work captures an inner cityspace, typical of the post industrial landscape, in a drive through the streets of Syracuse, New York. The work is spliced and recombined to become a collage-like moving painting.
screenings: TONY : The Other New York, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY
Color Field #12 2008 Single channel video / no audio 5.5 minutes
The work offers the disruption of children's chaotic play against a background reminiscent of formal modernist painting. issues of control, order, and rebellion are suggested.
screenings: Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 18th St Art Center, LA
Blink 2007 digital video, wood box 6 minute continuous loop color/no audio
The work self-consciously juxtaposes identity with sight and tricks of perception. An underlying theme is the invisibility of older women and the challenge of viewing them without the orthodoxy of the male gaze.
screenings: Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
without permission 2007 Single channel video w/sound color 7 minutes
The work is both triumphant and sad, as issues of black female bodies in performance for others and overcoming and experiencing joy in mastery is displayed.
screenings: Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Rapture 2006 Single channel video w/sound 9 minutes
Siblings speculate about where their mother is that has died several years ago. The afterlife is hoped for with some, the lost is felt by all.
screenings: Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
listening 2005 Single channel video w/sound 5 minutes
Contrasting the everydayness of an ordinary kitchen scene with subtle supernatural moments the piece is about absence, grief and longing. The video suggests a bridge across the rupture separating the living and the dead. An empty kitchen, signifying loss, reveals desires for an after-death existence and connection.
screenings: Slamdance International Film Festival, Park City UT / New York City NY
{Beauty Box} 2005 set of 36 pairs of photos
Women in American society have been coerced to become, not themselves, but a "presentation" altered to conform to this narrow ideal of beauty. This imposition leaves women feeling they always have to be enhanced. The self is no longer the focus, the viewer is. The important is not "being", but of "being seen". Seeing a Merle Norman cosmetics ad as a child I remember liking all the unique, quirky, diverse group of individuals in the before photos and being frightened by the uniformity of the women in the after photos. My belief is that every woman is beautiful; because of her spirit, her intelligence, her thoughtfulness, her strength, her singularity.
Beauty is not skin deep and it doesn't need lipstick.
exhibition: Exploring Beauty Symposium, Shaffer Art Building, Syracuse University
Define: Manhood 2005 Documentary 14 minutes
to define "manhood". A question asked of 40 men. The answers are as diverse as the men who are questioned. The subjects span a wide spectrum of race, age, class, educational levels, regions and sexual orientation. The answers are unrehearsed and issues of culture and personal expectations are revealed through personal stories. Men who have very concrete definitions of manhood are juxtaposed to those who are unsure and questioning and are unwilling to claim the word. As a secondary layer of the film, what does it mean that the filmmaker, a lesbian perceived as such by some of the participants, is asking this question? Do they react to this. Are their questions altered by this fact? Another question is how she react to this maleness, and this self-assessment that she has decided to investigate? Though the act of video taping this exchange we come to see that roles may not be as clear cut as they appear.
screenings: Anthology Film Archives, New York NY,
Bridge 2005 Single channel video w/sound 6 minutes
Using the visual language of abstract painting “Bridge” takes the viewer through a timeless multi-directional experience, a moving forward and backwards simultaneously, using a bridge as a metaphor for life, time and belief.
screenings: Squeaky Wheel Media Center, Buffalo NY, PixelPOP, Newark NJ and Brooklyn NY
adrift 2003 Single channel video w/sound 2 minutes
Through imagery of branches and quiet narration the film offers insight into a bond between a dying mother and a fearful daughter.
screenings: Roxbury International Film Festival, Roxbury, MA