Reaching
reaching for our other halves
what
roots
deep
dig,
what
roots
float?
what
story
braided
into
hair,
what
seeds
spun?
what
branch
long
reach,
who
meets
the
touch?
who
raised
the
riverbed,
how
does
she
sleep?
what
deepblue
deephum
blanketing
the
night?
what
tendril
points
the
way?
what
waters
broke?
what
waters
cleansed?
how
bright
the
star?
how
old
the
map?
what
names
older
than
money?
what
leaf
a
balm?
what
rock
a
book?
what
patient
medicine?
what
hands
held
tight
across
the
dark?
how
sweet
the
wings?
how
possible?
- Miatta Kawinzi
This work in embodied photography, collage, sculpture, writing, and sound explores the entanglements between the United States and Liberia, the West African republic established by the American Colonization Society in the 1800s as a place to re-settle formerly enslaved/free-born Black people from North America amid rising racial tensions. I am reflecting on Liberia’s position as a place of possibility for African-Americans around the time of the republic’s founding and through pan-African freedom movements in the 1960s and 70s, the tensions around notions of settlement, Indigeneity, and hierarchy in relation to the land, the more recent civil wars from the 1980s - early 2000s that displaced many including members of my family abroad, and the future possibilities that can exist in the space of reconnection and restoration. This work engages the ongoing search for a space of freedom, safety, and self-determination within the African diaspora and the emotional and imaginative landscapes of pan-African freedom dreaming.
I give thanks that the development and production of this ongoing work has received support from the Residency Unlimited 2023 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program, the 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, the Fall 2022 MacDowell Residency, the 2022-23 Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program, and the Archive Liberia community of collective study.
Exhibited 10 June - 9 July, 2023 as part of the in pieces… exhibition of the work of the incredible Residency Unlimited cohort Abang-guard (Maureen Catbagan + Jevijoe Vitug), Tatiana Arocha, Miatta Kawinzi, and Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow at PS122 Gallery in New York. Curated by Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, in pieces… encompasses a broad spectrum of narratives to shape a fuller and more nuanced understanding of historical knowledge and the intertwined formations of identity, memory and place.