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Supported by a Wexner Center virtual residency, Jennifer Harge and Devin Drake’s new multimedia installation The FLY | DROWN Fables presents an experimental folktale that honors the self-sovereignty of Black women.
Similar to performance artist Jennifer Harge’s installation FLY | DROWN (curated by Taylor Renee Aldridge), which premiered in Detroit in 2019, this project embodies memories and assembles artifacts to evoke Black domestic spaces that archive and queer ancestral legacies.
For this expanded iteration, Harge and longtime collaborator and filmmaker Devin Drake have created another chapter within the fable series, a video titled elder’s dream. Screened in an installation resembling a post–Great Migration home in the Black Midwest, the video interweaves a story of two characters, elder and nyeusi, who move through situations majestic and mundane. A Sankofa bird from the river (Sankofa, from the Twi language in Ghana, translates to “go back and get it”), nyeusi is elder’s child from a previous lifetime who has been conjured into the home. This new work evokes elder’s dream space, where she receives spiritual messages about nyeusi’s imminent arrival.
The fable is guided by the chapter “Archive of Sky: What We Became” in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s 2018 book M Archive: After the End of the World. The installation includes a cowrie shell sculpture from bree gant’s Otherlogue (2019) and Jasmine Hearn’s song “Riffs nor River” (2022), featuring Lily Gelfand, which plays on loop.
The installation is part of Portal For(e) the Ephemeral Passage, an interdisciplinary exhibition curated by jaamil olawale kosoko that amplifies Black feminist voices in contemporary art and performance. Click here to view the complete lineup.
Jennifer Harge and Devin Drake, The FLY | DROWN Fables, 2022, in Portal For(e) the Ephemeral Passage, installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, June 10–August 14, 2022. Photo: Stephen Takacs.
Jennifer Harge and Devin Drake, elder’s dream, 2022 (still) © Jennifer Harge and Devin Drake. Image courtesy of the artists.
Jennifer Harge, 2022. Photo: Devin Drake © Devin Drake.
Devin Drake, 2022. Photo: Devin Drake © Devin Drake.
Jennifer Harge (b. Saginaw, MI) is a choreographer, performance artist, and educator based in Detroit. She earned her MFA from the University of Iowa (Dean’s Graduate Fellow) and a BFA from the University of Michigan. In 2014, she founded Harge Dance Stories as a container for choreographic research. Learn more on the Harge Dance Stories website.
Devin Drake (b. Saginaw, MI) is a multimedia artist, designer, and documentarian based in Detroit whose work focuses on the beauty and simplicity of communication through design and visual documentation. Learn more on the artist’s website.
Portal For(e) the Ephemeral Passage is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by jaamil olawale kosoko in collaboration with all of its programming departments.
The video elder’s dream was commissioned through a virtual residency in the Wexner Center’s Department of Performing Arts.
PORTAL FOR(E) THE EPHEMERAL PASSAGE MADE POSSIBLE BY National Endowment for the Arts New England Foundation for the Arts
EXHIBITIONS MADE POSSIBLE BY Bill and Sheila Lambert The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Carol and David Aronowitz Crane Family Foundation Mike and Paige Crane
FREE GALLERIES MADE POSSIBLE BY American Electric Power Foundation Adam Flatto Mary and C. Robert Kidder Bill and Sheila Lambert
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR FREE GALLERIES PROVIDED BY CoverMyMeds PNC Foundation WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY The Wexner Family Greater Columbus Arts Council The Columbus Foundation National Endowment for the Arts Ohio Arts Council American Electric Power Foundation L Brands Foundation Adam Flatto Mary and C. Robert Kidder Bill and Sheila Lambert Institute of Museum and Library Services Nationwide Foundation Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Mike and Paige Crane Pete Scantland Axium Packaging CampusParc CoverMyMeds Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams President Kristina M. Johnson and Mrs. Veronica Meinhard Nancy Kramer Huntington Lisa Barton Johanna DeStefano Russell and Joyce Gertmenian Liza Kessler and Greg Henchel Ron and Ann Pizzuti Joyce and Chuck Shenk Bruce and Joy Soll Jones Day
Jennifer Harge / Devin Drake
