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• 1 2020-05-15T09:35:41-07:00 [artist] 5 adj - artist, portfolio gallery 2020-05-15T14:55:16-07:00

  My name is Aaliyah DejaMone’ Johnson. i am a queer black artist from louisiana. displaced by hurricane katrina when I was 8. raised in chicago. I am a site of creativity. I have a sense of understanding of my place and purpose in this world. In doing this work, this labor, I’ve inherited a fear of regurgitating information, a fear of not being heard, seen, understood. In using film and text as ceremony, and creating art, engaging oneself in a ceremonial release of the past, of memory, the stories. Existing for a higher purpose—a result of leaders, ancestors, women, wombs, mirrors, reflections before me. That which has crafted me. I am that I am. (12:35) I am fascinated by how creatives/artists/archivists/film-makers/directors facilitate discourse through movement/dance/sound/music/creativity. My intention is to communicate and extrapolate my lived experience as a tale of embodied movement, resiliency and resistance. To embody movement is to be an expression of or give a tangible or visible form to that which can be easily changed, mangled, disfigured. At the root of the embodiment practice is the reimagining the physical form of the spirit of a concept or idea. It’s a way of life, a progression toward evolving another concept or idea. It is a catalyst for change—stimulus in most cases. With this project, I hope to share a narrative about survival and black femininity—one that nurtures my reader’s understanding of my memory in its’ contemporary as it supports the history and future of the living and dead black. The future is world making, it is happening and manifesting most tangibly digitally—digital expression has shaped a lot my insight; I want to create and publish a unique capstone project—one that speaks to my experiences as a black student at Barnard, but one that honors my history and the steps it took to arrive to this point, as well as how my movement to date can aid me in my journey. Through this scholarship, I hope to show that the art and practice of storytelling is a form of survival that is honored and shared across and throughout bodies and nations. Storytelling is how humans make up ways to share/understand the events that we experience. Storytelling documents our haptic, sonic, emotional, sensational reactions/responses to stimulus. The stimulus that exists in the quotidian, our day to day. My movement is my testimony, my activism, my survival. In this practice of labeling and naming our experiences and observations, we combat this pain stemming from misunderstanding—the root of our suffering, the root of fear. Growing up Christian, I was taught that an internal fear, one kin to the fear of God, is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom that breaches understanding, knowledge and power.  The practice of transcending the suffering of one’s community begins in the body’s learning of community practice, order and language. The magic of creation and storytelling is the transforming of energy into a channel of empathy, a moment to be witnessed. I am in awe of the ways bodies interact with each other, with animals, with structures, concepts and ideas. It is a desire of mine to spend time pondering the human existence; I am interested in learning of our origin, our history, our pain, loss, suffering—-the ways we heal, cope and regenerate ourselves each day. This project is dedicated to the colored girls like myself: Ntozake Shange; Audre Lorde; Toni Morrison; June Jordan; Zora Neale Hurston; Solange Knowles; Yvette Christianse; Beloved—surviving, aging, othering. IN sharing my testimony, I invite thee to witness a sentimental archiving of memory; a hopeful and intentional meditation on identity, community, sovereignty and home.   

  
  
  SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS &
  GRATITUDE to THE ALLIANCE FOR NETWORKING VISUAL CULTURE for making SCALAR; a free, open-source publishing platform that celebrates long-form, digitally born scholarsip;
  
  CHECK OUT MY FIRST THREE EXHIBITIONS:
  
  #INTERSTITIAL (fall ’18, contributor, collaborative e-book)
  https://scalar.usc.edu/works/interstitial/interstitial
  #QUEERCURATORSHIP (spring ’20, curator, digital museum pop-up)
  https://scalar.usc.edu/works/artwork-sex-aesthetics--capitalism/artworks
  #I GOTTA GO HOME— (spring ’20, scholar, capstone project)
  https://scalar.usc.edu/works/igottagohome/igottagohome
  
  #MOVEMENTMOVEMENT (coming soon, survivor, narrative)