“Everyone is gathered at the foot of the winding staircase of the Elaine L. Jacob Galley, a part of Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. The windows are large—2 stories, omnipresent and face out towards Hancock Street in the center of midtown. The night crowd walks to their destination unaware of the vibrational pull happening in the gallery space.

Attendees are corralled as the lights begin to dim and the outside world’s reality is revealed as we all wait. Inaudible sounds make their way down the stairs and capture everyone’s attention. Anticipation is heavy on this fall night. No cell phones are out, no lights shining in the faces of the spectators. Just craned necks looking up—as if looking hard enough will reveal something. And eventually it does. Hard repetitive crunches start to add to the cacophony of sound. Steps. She is coming down the stairs. Her descent at a glacial and calculated pace captures our attention. We only hear the crunch of the plastic antebellum dress as it fills the corridor of the stairs and watch the vibrations of her hand-crafted parasol that rattles and shakes as she is possessed by the ancestral spirits. Somehow she still moves with grace and calculation. Her eyes unmoved as if there is everyone and no one there at all. The dim glow of the lights captures the heavy weight of her extended self like glacial forms that have emerged from the depths of the ocean. A weight she is willing to investigate.

Audible words make room during her final descent—carefully crafted sound sourced from the great Poet, Essayist and Wayne State Alumni Robert Hayden. His poem “Middle Passage,” written in the 1940’s about the slave trade route is entwined with an interview where he speaks of his Detroit. Hayden, a native of Detroit born in 1913, was the first African American Poet Laureate of the United States. He is quoted in saying there was “very little interest in the subject matter.” One wonders how much has changed in 2019?

His voice echoes soft and clear as she makes her way down the stars.

Sails, Flashing to the wind like weapons…

She continues her descent shaken and unshaken all the same, her umbrella rattles with cotton and seeds. An armature of protection—a false sense of security.
She confronts you as she approaches the ground level. She is no longer a spirit but one walking, living and breathing amongst us. Hayden’s voice quiets as her voice erupts, a gamut of emotion, cathartic and waiting to be exposed.

Middle Passage:
Voyage through death
To life upon these shores.
“10 April 1800—
Black rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
Their moaning is a prayer for death,
Ours and their own…”

Moans bellow and audible words continue to erupt from her small frame. You lose track if she is speaking or if Hayden has come back in to interject.

Her eyes full of emotion—as if she had absorbed it all from everyone that is and ever was. The collective pain hiding in the seams of her dress, filling its 15-foot-long train. With soft eyes, she casts it back onto you—not forcefully but with the acknowledgement that this pain is real and that it is still here—Detroit 2019, “America, land of the free.” She moves through the crowd; her dress interrupts your space as you are not sure if you should move back or stand still. It wraps around the attendees creating a river of light on the vinyl floor. Her eyes meet yours and she hands you a packet of seeds. Silence. You accept her offer.

Black gold, black ivory, black seed…

Margaret Laurena Kemp’s performance left the space in complete silence after her departure. Not for a second but many heart beats. Watery eyed and with a confidence unmatched, she left the space and her dress as a relic. As a reminder, not as a memento mori, but saying “this is still a problem, and this is your problem too.”

Everyone took in air. Margaret was ethereal and her movements everlasting. Thoughtfully and through heavy research and rehearsal she brings her vision to life, weaving together a story from past, present and future lives. Her work is about racial injustices and not all the same. She doesn’t want to tell only an African American story but a human story, in hopes that we can bring a little more humanity back into our world. ”