CITE

2020

CITE utilizes film editing techniques that articulate an uneasy relationship to the natural world. Six hundred still images of her dancing Black feet transcend time, melding the past with both the present and the future, and position historic and present fear alongside the pervasive jubilation of Black folks. Focusing on the natural world and the Black body—the feet, in particular— Kemp conjures a kaleidoscopic musing on movement and a body’s various physical states of being: Breathing. Dancing. Loitering. Longing. Laughing. The artist plays with the perception of the human form and how that perception shifts depending on the introduction of rhythmic motion and the body’s physical presence in nature.

CITE features images, all photographed outdoors by visual artist Laura Sanders, that hearken back to the canon of historical paintings by classical artists in which horizons are shown with the intent to celebrate dominance and ownership of bodies and land. When the Black body is introduced within this context, as with these images of brown feet upon the brown ground, that dialogue is artfully disrupted and upended. — Katoya Fleming