Emergence
Media installation, 2017

Emergence is a silent 2-channel video installation created to counter the violence of blackface in its representation of Blackness. This piece re-asserts the beauty of Blackness and challenge the reductive nature of contemporary Canadian blackface through extreme close-ups of Blackness in all its diversity. Shot in slow motion, the opening images of Black bodies of pressed against glass alludes through their distortion to the constraining conditions that them in stereotypes as well as their struggle to break free. In these pandemic times, the piece takes on a new significance as metaphor for what we are experiencing, especially as racialized bodies.

The piece, in installation mode, is meant to be rear-projected on 2 large screens facing each other at a distance of approximately 6 feet (2 meters). As much as the models are encased behind the glass, in that scenario, the viewer also experiences entrapment when they step into the space between the two screens.

Distributed by the CFMDC