I am currently working towards a solo exhibition scheduled for January 2022 at Women & Their Work in downtown Austin. I employ meteorological aesthetics as an allegory for oral narratives in a multi-channeled video installation entitled “A Welcoming Place”. I’m interested in how narratives can be informed by ecologies of testimonies via the collective method of “taking temperature”.
Forecasting, I propose, is the product of this data gathering, a practice of communication and codependency that relies on pointing out the environmental manifestations and historical markers of anti-Blackness that pervades gentrified landscapes. “A Welcoming Place” showcases poetic narratives stitched out of six conversations with Black and Brown Austinites, half of whom are born and raised in Austin. These conversations focus on the advice given to Black and Brown newcomers as well as highlighting each individual’s relationship to the city of Austin, with an emphasis on East Austin. Each interview will be played in full as part of an accompanying podcast alongside the exhibition to serve as a community archive resource.
Excerpts from each conversation culminate into a video aided by visuals produced in the Austin area, highlighting sites where Freedman communities once stood and an animation, appropriating film archives about the weather balloon–a carrier for a mechanism that collects information about the weather.
