Words collect under my soft palate, lips shut, sounds bubbling

A new video work by dance artist and writer Alexandrina Hemsley in which she deals with self-censoring as someone who experiences the silencing inherent in marginalisation and anti-blackness. This work continues the attempts of her artistic practice to retain multiplicity and morph the body’s narratives as a soft resistance to objectification and reductive representations. The work also aims to re-capture her identities out of the clutches of the daily colonial frameworks which through their all pervasive nature, often force her to harden out of protection.

Alongside this, is a challenge to herself – as an artist who experiences heightened distress over her appearance – to look in the camera for more than a minute.

 

Film and text by Alexandrina Hemsley.

Sound Alexandrina Hemsley using samples from Nina Simone’s “Feelings” (live at Montreux Jazz Festival • 1976).

Originally screened at DECORUM X: The Worst of Censorship, V&A Museum: 

View Here.