Exhibition Details
“We carry history in the body,” says the artist Ufuoma Essi. Born and based in southeast London, the artist has observed that our understanding of the past is shaped by state archives and institutions that elevate certain histories while pushing others to the periphery.
To re-center narratives of Black life marginalized within official records, Essi creates films that draw on personal memory, found footage, and the work of Black feminist writers and performers, expanding the idea of what an archive can be.
To re-center narratives of Black life marginalized within official records, Essi creates films that draw on personal memory, found footage, and the work of Black feminist writers and performers, expanding the idea of what an archive can be.
Additional Details
Projects: Ufuoma Essi presents two recent works shot on Super 8mm film. Half Memory (2024) is inspired by novelist Toni Morrison’s notion of “rememory,” which describes how repressed experiences are relived in moments of involuntary recollection. In Bodies In Dissent (2021), Essi’s camera traces how histories of performance preserve evidence of our lives.
Layering archival footage of dancer Loretta Abbott and concert audio by jazz musicians Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Essi’s film highlights her understanding of how we carry the past “within ourselves, across generations, across histories, and across the Atlantic.”
Layering archival footage of dancer Loretta Abbott and concert audio by jazz musicians Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Essi’s film highlights her understanding of how we carry the past “within ourselves, across generations, across histories, and across the Atlantic.”
Location
MoMA
11 West 53 Street, Manhattan
New York, NY 10019
Image: Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York