<< REWIND: BODIES @ BronxArtSpace
Last month I presented new objects in my first exhibition / group show in 2 years. I’ve been on a sabbatical of sorts these last 24 months…”getting well.” In June of 2022, I underwent a life-altering / life-improving surgery. After years of fighting with and for my body, I can say August-October marked the first time in a decade that I feel like “myself” again. The irony and synchronicity of the first show I would participate in, titled BODIES, speaks to something beyond the darkness (more on this later).
On view was a new (un)sunken place, (un)sunken place #4 , photographs from somewhere in the unfinished. With previously viewed images taken in the Bay Area and new shots I’ve taken since returning to Brooklyn, I also previewed a new series of bottles I’ve been adorning in the last 2 years: Memory Packets.
Here is my thought process about them thus far via my ig promo for the show….
my experience of getting well has been one long ceremony. the longest ritual of my life. i gave up things and started new habits and the supplement bottles accumulated. new practices led to new bottles and then i started thinking about excess, preservation, and reducing waste. most of all, i contemplated what they held once emptied. what could be stuffed or placed or dropped into them? how could they continue to serve a purpose or be useful or fulfill nothing at all except, perhaps, to be gazed upon? beautified? how does the desire for them to contain something, that projection, hold all the value they need…an alchemy of mind?
someone with a more established art career than mine told me i shouldn’t tell anyone that some of them may be empty. so while i’m not saying that now, i’m saying some are filled with space that cannot be occupied. or named.
(a note: i don’t like to follow all “the rules” y’all. i’m learning through failure. isn’t that why we’re here?)
some of them are filled with remnants, evidence of the lengths i went through to remain connected here. what would you put into them? memories (the past)? dreams (the future)? what occupies your now and what dose do you take daily?
these objects tell a history. the materials are a map. their unknown contents are confirmation of initiation into a body i’ve long inhabited, but haven’t long possessed. the afterlife of spiritual displacement.
BODIES featured the works of six female artists; Bianca Abdi-Borangi, Tasha Dougé, Isadora Frost, Tania Balan-Gaubert, Tere Garcia, and Anjelic Owens. The artists draw influence from racial, gender, and cultural identities. Promoting conversations and art-making referencing politicized bodies, sex, education, land/borders, advocacy, and mental health.
Curated by Amanda M. Johnson, BODIES was on view at BronxArtSpace from September 8, 2023 - October 7, 2023.