January 25 – April 7, 2021
“Middle Passage:/ voyage through death/ to life upon these shores.” —Robert Hayden, “Middle Passage”
“I believe in making dreams a reality. And I also believe we also have the power to do that.” —Helina Metaferia, (Middle) Passage for Dreams
In Helina Metaferia’s multi-channel video installation (Middle) Passage for Dreams (21:38, 2016–2019), figures in various landscapes reflect on joy, the body, and the experience of being in the world in their skin. In summer grass, in a winter forest, on a beach in summer, in a field in autumn, gathered on a gazebo porch, small groups of men and women discuss their dreams and fears, speaking directly to the camera and underscored by a soundtrack of the sounds of nature.
The simple acts undertaken by these figures are complicated by the fact that they are Black and the history of Black bodies in this country is fraught with tragedy and violence that began with the slave trade, or Middle Passage, that Metaferia references in the title. The work takes this historic reality as a given and celebrates, rather than laments, the beauty of these bodies, lives, and voices. It is the story of the present and beyond. Saidiya Hartman, an American writer and academic whose work focuses on African-American studies and the afterlife of slavery, asks, “How can narrative embody life in words and at the same time respect what we cannot know?” This simultaneous knowing and accepting of the unknown is where (Middle) Passage for Dreams finds its strength. As one of the speakers in the piece says, “That future is coming, whether we want it to or not. We shape what the particular permutation of that future looks like.”
By inserting Black bodies into natural spaces and asking the speakers to share their experiences, Metaferia rejects the colonialist denial so prevalent in the storytelling of this country. History is the narrative of journeys taken, told by all on that voyage. Who tells which story and how is the history of liberation—or oppression.
“The erasure of the body encourages us to think that we are listening to neutral, objective facts, facts that are not particular to who is sharing the information,” Black feminist scholar bell hooks tells us. But we know, as hooks does, that whomever is sharing the information is also relevant to the facts. The teller not only challenges the purported neutrality of those facts, but constitutes them in ways that deepen their meaning and expand (or contract) the possibilities they contain.
Set in four seasons over five chapters, (Middle) Passage for Dreams is a shared inner journey. At this moment, it is urgent to acknowledge what survives, what has endured despite all, and celebrate what is yet to come: the beautiful and unknowable future.
—Keith Miller, Curator
(Middle) Passage for Dreams is a multichannel video art project that features Black bodies at rest in benevolent landscapes while discussing assorted contemporary topics, including notions of empowerment, existentialism, and what it means to be Black in America at this time. The video and its installation reclaims Black bodies from the spectacles of death and trauma that are continuously circulating in our screen-dependent era. The work interrogates land marked by America’s violent history (i.e. black bodies on ground and police brutality, black bodies against trees and lynching, black bodies in water and the transatlantic slave trade, black bodies on plantations). The project was filmed over a three year period at sites across the United States and in all four seasons. — Helina Metaferia