WITNESS : SELF PORTRAIT SERIES
‘Editors Pick’
Canadian Art Magazine
Upcoming Show
Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna
June 2024
Solo Exhibition
Fentster Gallery
402 College St, Toronto
Runs til Jan 22, 2020
Group Exhibition ‘Born in Power’
Winnipeg Art Gallery
Nov 7 - April 11, 2021
I am interested in working with performative inquiry to explore themes of isolation, reclamation, grief and longing within public space and photography.
Inspired by a Butoh workshop I participated in and my own embodied practice, I used Berlin’s vintage photo booths during a 2018 residency as my witness and as a place of solace to capture these photos.
Each time I return to these photos they seem to evolve and reveal my own Black experience from a place of vulnerability and reclamation as I process and experience these times of lockdown and racial unrest.
What is BUTOH? “Originally called Ankoku Butoh (Dance of Darkness) conceived in Japan during the late 50’s and early 60’s, during the social turmoil after the war sought to find an expression through dance. Rather than aspiring to an aesthetic ideal, the dance attempts to expose the joys and sorrows of life, exploring the most fundamental elements of physical and psychological existence. It goes beyond the confines of specific cultures and aims for universal expression that touches the soul of humanity. It also crosses the boundaries between dance and theatre, creating a unique form of expression that engages, moves and intrigues.”
EXCERPT FROM NIV MAGAZINE ARTICLE :
Can you take us through the process of creating Witness?
At residency I didn’t have other people to work with so I decided to make myself central to the work and at that point I’d been doing a lot of nude photography, but nude from the sense of wanting to create powerful positive nudes of brown, Black women. Then I started to question, what does it mean to be naked but from an emotional standpoint. In our culture we’re always putting a certain face forward or a mask. So I was excited to work in the realm of what does it mean to be vulnerable in front of the camera? At the time I was being introduced to Butoh as a practice as a way to tap into these universal human emotions and universal human truths.
And what made you decide to take photos of yourself?
I loved Berlin so much I wanted to move there, but simultaneously I felt displaced and isolated and had different feelings coming up. And so I used different performance modalities to kind of work through them. I thought what if I used these vintage photo booths as if, and I don’t have a Christian background, but like they’re like my confessionals, where you go in the darkness of the space so that you can allow yourself to be seen and to really have this private emotional space. It’s partially performed but I’m also revealing something while it’s being performed.
What surprised you the most about yourself while doing this work?
What surprised me was seeing myself in this way. You know, often if we go into a photo booth and we want to feel pretty, or goofy, or happy. I wanted to allow myself to perform and use different practices to show a different face and to not worry if this is beautiful. It felt right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I thought, “I like this” but I also feel awkward sharing it because the way we show ourselves to the outside world is a very different guise. There is one image where I’m actually crying but I’ve noticed that image really moves people. We actually call people in more when we show vulnerability.
How does the work make you feel when you see it now?
I wasn’t approaching the work as a Jew or a Black person or anything…it was just, I am those things. I was approaching the work from this really human place and that’s why it still speaks to me and feels relevant to me during this time because the emotions that are on display are coming from a universal truth of my multilayered experience as a human. But it also brings out the angst that is coming out from being in a pandemic, and the angst that comes out of the racism that exists in our community, and the social and racial unrest that is being brought to light right now. Allowing people to witness you and allowing yourself to be witnessed is a way of ultimate love. When I look at the work I see more things come up. There’s something about this work, for me, that keeps on evolving. “
