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Digital Art Exhibition: From red dust to Black clay
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Details
This event is part of the 30th NYAFF — "Freeforms" Learn More
About the Exhibition
Zainab Aliyu, 2023 39 minutes; English, French, Swahili; English subtitles the bodies broken on the trail of tears and the bodies melted in middle passage are married to rock and ocean by now and the mountains crumbling on white men the waters pulling white men down sing for red dust and black clay good news about the earth — Lucille Clifton, Good News About the Earth (68) Evoking poet Lucille Cliffton’s call to ‘sing for red dust and black clay’ in Good News About the Earth, Nigerian-American artist Zainab Aliyu invites thirty filmmakers working within African diasporic cinema to explore pottery as a metaphor that points towards the potential of free forms in her video piece, From red dust to Black clay. Like pottery, film can be a vessel for expressing hopes, dreams, memories and intentions. Invited filmmakers imagine speculative containers for holding these expressions traced from the contours of Black existence, and Aliyu worked with Amsterdam-based Martinique illustrator Mickaël Mahela to translate the filmmakers' visions into digitized forms. What emerges is a cross-diasporic, intergenerational, and collective meditation on holding, and an assemblage of the vessels from which their meaning is attained. In this archival depiction of contemporary Black being that extends beyond the frame, Aliyu’s From red dust to Black clay emphasizes the urgency of, given the conditioned violences derived from the structure of the hold (as described by theorist Christina Sharpe), imagining generative possibilities for holding and being beholden to each other. Artist Zainab Aliyu Narrators Abdul Ndadi Akin Omotoso Andrew Dosunmu Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda Cilia Sawadogo Ekwa Msangi Férid Boughedir Gaston Kaborè Guetty Felin Judy Kibinge Joël Karekezi Kenneth Gyang Ladan Osman LiON Ayodele Mamadou Dia Mariette Monpierre Moussa Sene Absa Mwangi Hutter Nganji Mutiri Ngozi Onwurah nora chipaumire Olive Nwosu Rahmatou Keïta Raja Amari Raynald Leconte Sifiso Khanyile Stephina Zwane Teddy Goitom Tsitsi Dangarembga Xoliswa Sithole Production Assistant Dara Ojugbele Illustrator Mickaël Mahela Audio Composer Nombuso Mathibela Curators Dara Ojugbele, Farima Kone Kito and Mahen Bonetti