orange artist statement
1 media/3 artist statement_thumb.jpg 2020-04-24T16:46:20-07:00 Aaliyah DejaMone' Johnson 0dc03f6b2a2b3344c4b0611f6169a90f9ce4e372 37012 3 JOHNSON, AALIYAH DEJA MONE' -B.A. in Africana and Women’s Gender & Sexuality studies -Barnard ’20 -queer black woman artist from Louisiana chicago new york -fascinated by world making -9/11 changed my life -2005 changed my life -juneteenth changed my life -googling transgenerational trauma changed my life -god is my witness I GOTTA GO HOME— I am here to share a story -about survival -about home -about human making worlds Demand explanations. INNOCENT—the girl, not the cyclone—I was eight when Katrina displaced us; my mother, her mother, her mother, her children—/ seizing the beauty of the day/fantasizing the possibilities of tomorrow. / Transcending borders, emerging from the South, / the girl grew up with aspirations / floorplans, / an address / abundance, / refugee status, or / fullness, comfort, security, purpose / mother’s care—but sovereignty / concerns, thoughts, images / beyond the borders of her room, street, city, nation, space, mind (/real and imagined) /Plagued with / -sight -touch - feeling - emotion - taste -time -sound -intuition FEELING the sensations of this world / —reactions to the stimuli of this inherited place. / —all of them concerned with this young girls’ fate and fortune. / I demand an explanation. A / visual understanding. A verbal cue. / -empathy There are no quarrels on the matter than I am…I am a woman…I am a black woman who has lived, loved and known the other fully and wholly in this vessel. A sacred vessel, of which anyone with a sliver of curiosity is invited to peer or witness—on the days I remember to honor my home or focus on the matter at hand /-leave your shoes at the door -wash your hands -complete ritualistic practices—anything that considers the politics of this movement /We have been witnessed and made witness /We have been subjugated and made subject /We have been observed and made— albeit my sister’s testimony might be my own, THIS is not an attempt to narrate the other black —or white/colored—woman/body— I believe we are here together because you too have been longing for these words here in this book the contents of this book, may you find slivers of home in this book—well surely, healing exists there /SO /If you, like me, have met the terms associated with being human—you have encountered the sensations of the unanimous being that bleeds and cries and dies; or the messiah’s return after three days of not doing that—presumably, what might one expect of the journey to exodus to genesis and back—I must make this music; let me dance this body of art; let us honor the survivors, these bodies that carry create inflict consume maintain regenerate reorder mourn refigure heal release cleanse disappear immunize unearth trauma of all sorts. this is a message to the survivors. /I am you / we are them. —home meta 2020-05-15T09:24:59-07:00 Aaliyah DejaMone' Johnson 0dc03f6b2a2b3344c4b0611f6169a90f9ce4e372Media
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| type | rdf:type | http://scalar.usc.edu/2012/01/scalar-ns#Media |
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| thumbnail | art:thumbnail | media/3 artist statement_thumb.jpg |
| was attributed to | prov:wasAttributedTo | https://scalar.usc.edu/works/igottagohome/users/28125 |
| created | dcterms:created | 2020-04-24T16:46:20-07:00 |
Version 3
| resource | rdf:resource | https://scalar.usc.edu/works/igottagohome/media/orange-artist-statement.3 |
| versionnumber | ov:versionnumber | 3 |
| title | dcterms:title | orange artist statement |
| description | dcterms:description | JOHNSON, AALIYAH DEJA MONE' -B.A. in Africana and Women’s Gender & Sexuality studies -Barnard ’20 -queer black woman artist from Louisiana chicago new york -fascinated by world making -9/11 changed my life -2005 changed my life -juneteenth changed my life -googling transgenerational trauma changed my life -god is my witness I GOTTA GO HOME— I am here to share a story -about survival -about home -about human making worlds Demand explanations. INNOCENT—the girl, not the cyclone—I was eight when Katrina displaced us; my mother, her mother, her mother, her children—/ seizing the beauty of the day/fantasizing the possibilities of tomorrow. / Transcending borders, emerging from the South, / the girl grew up with aspirations / floorplans, / an address / abundance, / refugee status, or / fullness, comfort, security, purpose / mother’s care—but sovereignty / concerns, thoughts, images / beyond the borders of her room, street, city, nation, space, mind (/real and imagined) /Plagued with / -sight -touch - feeling - emotion - taste -time -sound -intuition FEELING the sensations of this world / —reactions to the stimuli of this inherited place. / —all of them concerned with this young girls’ fate and fortune. / I demand an explanation. A / visual understanding. A verbal cue. / -empathy There are no quarrels on the matter than I am…I am a woman…I am a black woman who has lived, loved and known the other fully and wholly in this vessel. A sacred vessel, of which anyone with a sliver of curiosity is invited to peer or witness—on the days I remember to honor my home or focus on the matter at hand /-leave your shoes at the door -wash your hands -complete ritualistic practices—anything that considers the politics of this movement /We have been witnessed and made witness /We have been subjugated and made subject /We have been observed and made— albeit my sister’s testimony might be my own, THIS is not an attempt to narrate the other black —or white/colored—woman/body— I believe we are here together because you too have been longing for these words here in this book the contents of this book, may you find slivers of home in this book—well surely, healing exists there /SO /If you, like me, have met the terms associated with being human—you have encountered the sensations of the unanimous being that bleeds and cries and dies; or the messiah’s return after three days of not doing that—presumably, what might one expect of the journey to exodus to genesis and back—I must make this music; let me dance this body of art; let us honor the survivors, these bodies that carry create inflict consume maintain regenerate reorder mourn refigure heal release cleanse disappear immunize unearth trauma of all sorts. this is a message to the survivors. /I am you / we are them. —home |
| url | art:url | media/3 artist statement.jpg |
| default view | scalar:defaultView | meta |
| was attributed to | prov:wasAttributedTo | https://scalar.usc.edu/works/igottagohome/users/28125 |
| created | dcterms:created | 2020-05-15T09:24:59-07:00 |
| type | rdf:type | http://scalar.usc.edu/2012/01/scalar-ns#Version |
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2020-03-30T00:14:16-07:00
I GOTTA GO HOME—
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#IGOTTAGOHOME
structured_gallery
2020-05-15T14:58:23-07:00
aaliyah dejamone' johnson
“And I don’t know any more tricks / I am really colored and really sad sometime and you hurt me / more than I ever danced—“
(Ntozake Shange ’70, for colored girls who considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, 1974)
“And so I continue: a Black woman who would be an agent for change, an active member of the hoped-for apocalypse. I am somebody seeking to make, or to create, revolutionary connections between the full identity of my love, of what hurts me, or fills me with nausea, and the way things are: what we are forced to learn, to “master,” what we are trained to ignore, what we are bribed into accepting, what we are rewarded for doing, or not doing…Ah, momma, did the house ever know the nighttime of your spirit, the flash and flame of you—“
(June Jordan ’57, Notes of a Barnard Droupout,1975)
“And listening to that kind of talk is just like opening your mouth and letting the moon shine down your throat…you got to go there to know there—your poppa and your momma and nobody else can’t tell you and show you. Two things everybody got to do for themselves: they got to go to God and they got to find out about living for theirselves.”
(Zora Neale Hurston ’28, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
I imagined a capstone project that would encapsulate all that I am—the young woman Barnard has crafted me to be. In the last two years, I have meditated on who that woman might be—Ntozake carried my soul out of the dark night and to a stage, into a choreopoem, a dance, a song; June showed this damned black child that those feelings of pain, confusion and bitterness related to her origins were the product of the political and economic realities underlying the black condition in white America. Zora showed me about going places and taking God with me. Through these women, this sisterhood bestowed upon me by this place that has brought us together, I was shaping my identity—keeping myself alive. I realized then, that this little dance I was engaging in with God, myself and the other, was my performance—I was curating my own show! The cornerstone was survival—and now, I GOTTA GO HOME.
-about [the artist]
- about [the capstone project]
[CITATIONS.]
