BODY LANGUAGE: BLACK FEMME WOMEN IN THE DIGITAL AGE
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BODY LANGUAGE: BLACK FEMME WOMEN IN THE DIGITAL AGE 〰️
Black Artist Research Space is pleased to present Body Language: Black Femme Women in the Digital Age, the most recent body of work by educator and multidisciplinary artist Chrystal Seawood in collaboration with performance artist Brooke Jay. The exhibition features painting, installation, video, and performance art across two thematic sections.
Advancing the artists’ exploration of their cultural and personal female identity, Body Language: Black Femme Women in the Digital Age looks to social media as a subversive cultural site that disrupts dominant expectations and writes alternative narratives of sexuality. For the exhibition, Chrystal Seawood renders four life size paintings that depict contemporary images of Black feminine-presenting women in early adulthood. As a way to shift notions of shame and censorship surrounding Black women and their bodies, Seawood paints in vibrant colors and utilizes glitter to accent hair, nails, and other accessories, drawing the viewer’s attention to each figures gesture and position.
Chrystal Seawood, B.A.P.S, 2022, acrylic and enamel on PVC Sintra Board, 4’ x 5’
Kirby Griffin, Brook Jay as The Empress, 2018, digital print, 18 x 24 inches
Surveying friends and acquaintances as part of her practice, Chrystal Seawood utilizes her experience as an educator to raise and address questions around body autonomy and sexual agency. She analyzes this relationship in the multi-channel installation, You That Bitch (2022). In the artwork, we see screen recordings of Black women brandishing their desirability for an unknown audience from their point of view. Seawood investigates how beliefs about our desirability influence our perception of our access to power, how we show up when we perceive ourselves to be desirable, and how this perception ultimately affects our ideas around power.
The exhibition extends to JUPITER (2022), a three-part performance by Brooke Jay in collaboration with cinematographer Kirby Griffin. JUPITER is an Afro-futuristic universe where the viewer encounters three icons. — The Creator, the Star, and the Empress. As the Creator, Brooke Jay emotes the Black woman as Goddess, awakening her creative energy by activating her sensual power. In JUPITER each icon is the personification of freedom, exploration, and continuous innovation of self, rejecting prevalent dialogue that often dismisses Black women as autonomous sexual beings and endorses rigid ideals for their sexual conduct.
In relation to the construction of sex stereotypes and subsequent social patterns of sexual objectification, efforts within the Black community to safeguard and/or moderate narratives about Black women and their bodies make sense. Body Language: Black Femme Women in the Digital Age considers this social structure, raising the question, how do Black women navigate these nuanced sexual politics and negotiate uses of their bodies alongside prescriptive expectations for their sexuality.