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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.
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
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Jennifer Harge / Devin Drake
