Charity Harris is an interdisciplinary artist from Atlanta, and currently residing in the greater Washington D.C. area. She creates sculptures from found and ready-made materials using her Southern upbringing as the driving force for the content that fuels her work—race, religion, gender, and the human relationship to nature. She combines the use of "humble materials" with her love of natural textures and historic costume to explore Southern identity through her perspective as an African-American woman.
8:46
8:46 visual prayer + medicine for times of grief
single-channel video with sound
Voiceover: Phylicia Ghee
8:46 is a visual prayer named for the approximate amount of time the officer kneeled on George
Floyd's neck ultimately killing him. This work is in honor of George Floyd and countless others.
Moving images that overlap are anchored by one image depicting me breathing. Other images of
moments from my life both during the pandemic, and some from years prior, are layered together
creating a montage of inherited and learned restorative healing practices. How do we heal? What
does rest look like in this time? How do we endeavor to reclaim ancestral practices of self-preservation? How can we speak life over one another? How do we reconnect with joy? This is a
work of contemplation. A place to meet both the questions and the answers.
These are seeds of longevity, acts of protection, catharsis, and self, family, community, and cultural
preservation. These overlapping moving images are overlaid by the sound of me breathing and
praying for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Essentially this is 8 minutes and 46 seconds of reverence. A visual and auditory medicine for
times of grief.
My hope is that by breathing for this time, this encourages the viewer to breathe as well;
activating the parasympathetic nervous system and shifting the internal state of the body from one
of stress to one of calm. This is also cleansing, clearing, and oxygenating the cells, ultimately
having a positive effecting on the heart, the brain, the digestive system, and the immune system
8:46 is displayed in my 2020 Sondheim Finalist Virtual Exhibition, “WE ARE THE INFINITE, DISGUISED AS THE FINITE”
Self-Guided Walk Through of Virtual Exhibition:
artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/1260335/phylicia-ghee-2020-janet-walter-sondheim-artscape-finalist-exhibition
single-channel video with sound
Voiceover: Phylicia Ghee
8:46 is a visual prayer named for the approximate amount of time the officer kneeled on George
Floyd's neck ultimately killing him. This work is in honor of George Floyd and countless others.
Moving images that overlap are anchored by one image depicting me breathing. Other images of
moments from my life both during the pandemic, and some from years prior, are layered together
creating a montage of inherited and learned restorative healing practices. How do we heal? What
does rest look like in this time? How do we endeavor to reclaim ancestral practices of self-preservation? How can we speak life over one another? How do we reconnect with joy? This is a
work of contemplation. A place to meet both the questions and the answers.
These are seeds of longevity, acts of protection, catharsis, and self, family, community, and cultural
preservation. These overlapping moving images are overlaid by the sound of me breathing and
praying for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Essentially this is 8 minutes and 46 seconds of reverence. A visual and auditory medicine for
times of grief.
My hope is that by breathing for this time, this encourages the viewer to breathe as well;
activating the parasympathetic nervous system and shifting the internal state of the body from one
of stress to one of calm. This is also cleansing, clearing, and oxygenating the cells, ultimately
having a positive effecting on the heart, the brain, the digestive system, and the immune system
8:46 is displayed in my 2020 Sondheim Finalist Virtual Exhibition, “WE ARE THE INFINITE, DISGUISED AS THE FINITE”
Self-Guided Walk Through of Virtual Exhibition:
artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/1260335/phylicia-ghee-2020-janet-walter-sondheim-artscape-finalist-exhibition
Medium: Single-Channel Video with Sound
Year: 2020
INTREPID III (Excerpt)
INTREPID III
August 12, 2018
2:58 minute EXCERPT from 15:27 minute ritual performance; performed on Martha’s Vineyard, Oak Bluffs, at Historic Inkwell Beach
“I am I am I am, I surrender,” charcoal on 9 × 9' paper
Video documentation: David Welch
Voiceover, written and spoken by Phylicia Ghee; Sound engineer: Evan Kornblum
INTREPID is a ritual performance series in which I am using my body to move in a spiral formation while writing a series of repeated affirmations in charcoal on a 9 by 9' sheet of paper. This ritual uses movement and repetition to build new framework in the brain and initiate new neural connections. The vision for INTREPID came during a time when I was studying dance, neural plasticity, alchemy, and subatomic particle collisions. When subatomic particles collide, they form spirals. The spiral is also an important family symbol for my grandfather. It is found in the double helix of our DNA and can be found in nature, both molecularly and galactically.
A fire in my apartment three years prior to the first performance of INTREPID opened my eyes to exploring charcoal as a tool and as a residue of fire. Charcoal not only carries with it the combustive, alchemical energy of fire into the work, but it also serves as a ritual tool and purifier of water (our bodies being up to 60% water). The affirmations I write in charcoal are transcribed onto my skin.
I have performed INTREPID four times over the past five years. My body, never leaving the paper, slowly erases the words of the affirmations I am writing, and they begin to cover my skin. In this way, I am stepping into my intentions in a very literal way. What I write is ultimately erased, although not completely. The beginning of the spiral of affirmations can still be read faintly. This performance challenges me not only to accept the impermanence of life but also to find and connect with that which is ever present, can never be erased, and never dies. Along with my affirmations, the 9 × 9' paper holds my fingerprints and the unique markings made by my body. This paper holds a story of interconnectedness. A story of who I was and who I became. It is a portrait of myself, my ancestors, and the larger whole.
"By weighting the word “performance” with the preface “ritual”, Ghee not only establishes her process and the documentation of her process as something more than performative, but she also offers a critical assessment and framing for her work as an active, community-centered practice. The spaces she occupies and the histories she channels center Black experience, draw from African diasporic spiritual systems and assert intuition as an essential feature of her artistic process."
- Angela N. Carroll for Black Art In America
August 12, 2018
2:58 minute EXCERPT from 15:27 minute ritual performance; performed on Martha’s Vineyard, Oak Bluffs, at Historic Inkwell Beach
“I am I am I am, I surrender,” charcoal on 9 × 9' paper
Video documentation: David Welch
Voiceover, written and spoken by Phylicia Ghee; Sound engineer: Evan Kornblum
INTREPID is a ritual performance series in which I am using my body to move in a spiral formation while writing a series of repeated affirmations in charcoal on a 9 by 9' sheet of paper. This ritual uses movement and repetition to build new framework in the brain and initiate new neural connections. The vision for INTREPID came during a time when I was studying dance, neural plasticity, alchemy, and subatomic particle collisions. When subatomic particles collide, they form spirals. The spiral is also an important family symbol for my grandfather. It is found in the double helix of our DNA and can be found in nature, both molecularly and galactically.
A fire in my apartment three years prior to the first performance of INTREPID opened my eyes to exploring charcoal as a tool and as a residue of fire. Charcoal not only carries with it the combustive, alchemical energy of fire into the work, but it also serves as a ritual tool and purifier of water (our bodies being up to 60% water). The affirmations I write in charcoal are transcribed onto my skin.
I have performed INTREPID four times over the past five years. My body, never leaving the paper, slowly erases the words of the affirmations I am writing, and they begin to cover my skin. In this way, I am stepping into my intentions in a very literal way. What I write is ultimately erased, although not completely. The beginning of the spiral of affirmations can still be read faintly. This performance challenges me not only to accept the impermanence of life but also to find and connect with that which is ever present, can never be erased, and never dies. Along with my affirmations, the 9 × 9' paper holds my fingerprints and the unique markings made by my body. This paper holds a story of interconnectedness. A story of who I was and who I became. It is a portrait of myself, my ancestors, and the larger whole.
"By weighting the word “performance” with the preface “ritual”, Ghee not only establishes her process and the documentation of her process as something more than performative, but she also offers a critical assessment and framing for her work as an active, community-centered practice. The spaces she occupies and the histories she channels center Black experience, draw from African diasporic spiritual systems and assert intuition as an essential feature of her artistic process."
- Angela N. Carroll for Black Art In America
Medium: Performance, Charcoal on 9'X9' Paper
Year: 2018
LIVE Art Talk: strikeWare
Baltimore-based collective strikeWare, a finalist for the 2020 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize, is driven to rethink and breakdown tangible and intangible hierarchies. In conversation with Joy Davis, Manager of Adult and Community Program, its members discuss the collaborative process, the importance of creating art experiences in museums and other historic spaces, and using historic institutions as a catalyst for their work.
Medium: Video
Year: 2021
Details: 40 minutes
Renovations - A Walk-thru Tour
strikeWare's 'Renovations' examines the history of African-American education in Baltimore from the founding of the city's first public high school for Black students to the present day. The show is open 12-4 every Saturday and Sunday at the Carroll Mansion and runs through March 1st. We're also doing a gallery talk on February 8th at 2pm. Renovations uses media such as virtual and augmented reality, interactive sculpture, and immersive projection to draw out the hidden narratives and ongoing struggles in our educational system.
Medium: video
Year: 2020
Details: 7 minutes
Kwame Shaka Opare is a classically trained West African dancer with an MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland. At 14, he became a principal dancer with Kankouran West African Dance Company (Washington DC). As a young adult, Kwame Shaka moved to New York where he established himself as a dynamic instructor and choreographer. In the late 90s, he began touring with the Broadway show STOMP, in the lead role and as rehearsal director where he remained for 8 years.
NO PASA NADA
This performance is a collaboration among Mia Eva, Caleb Duarte, Judy Stone, Francisco Hidalgo and audience participants. The one-night, one hour performance took place in the tiny Galeria El Cerrillo in Chiapas Mexico on March 17th, 2009.
When the performance begins we see a group of men using ropes to lift an eight-inch, 600 pound slab of concrete. While they are struggling to lift the slab, Mia tries to crawl and balance on the cement and a video of Francisco's energy work is projected outside the gallery space. At this point the audience is not fully aware that Mia is paralyzed.
During the performance the public experiences the fear and danger involved in lifting the slab as well as Mia’s fragility and strength. When the slab is lifted it symbolically raises the body of the “lower class” to the eye level of the audience, this confruntation made much of the audience hesitant to enter the room.
The emotional center of the performance is felt when Eva shakes her elbows to balance, and her movement, in turn, causes the ropes, which are connected to the arms of the audience, to tremble. In this moment architectural structures and the human figure are at once trapped in friction, tension, and failure—each looking for definitions, places and goals to be reached. The artists seek to explore how labor and struggle exist alongside acts as simple as breathing, and how the natural forces of balance, compression, tension and expansion can be amplified into aesthetic, local, social and political spheres.
When the performance begins we see a group of men using ropes to lift an eight-inch, 600 pound slab of concrete. While they are struggling to lift the slab, Mia tries to crawl and balance on the cement and a video of Francisco's energy work is projected outside the gallery space. At this point the audience is not fully aware that Mia is paralyzed.
During the performance the public experiences the fear and danger involved in lifting the slab as well as Mia’s fragility and strength. When the slab is lifted it symbolically raises the body of the “lower class” to the eye level of the audience, this confruntation made much of the audience hesitant to enter the room.
The emotional center of the performance is felt when Eva shakes her elbows to balance, and her movement, in turn, causes the ropes, which are connected to the arms of the audience, to tremble. In this moment architectural structures and the human figure are at once trapped in friction, tension, and failure—each looking for definitions, places and goals to be reached. The artists seek to explore how labor and struggle exist alongside acts as simple as breathing, and how the natural forces of balance, compression, tension and expansion can be amplified into aesthetic, local, social and political spheres.
Year: 2009
BURIAL
ENTIERRO/ BURIAL
Elambo Bajo, in Chiapas, is an autonomous Zapatista community not far from San Cristobal de las Casas. Having declared its independence, the mostly indigenous population is removed from the turmoil found in cities with conflicting political parties. At the same time, this separation also leaves it without municipal services and government structures. A number of projects in Elambo Bajo examine the idea of autonomy on individual, communal, and political levels.
This work took place with EZLN community Elambo Bajo. This work is an investigation of how the body and simple actions can bring cycles of experienced tragedy into possibilities for healing individually and collectively. Caleb Duarte, Emory Douglas, and Mia Eva created an action in which indigenous Mayan children buried us: representatives of disenfranchised communities (Latino, Black, disabled) from the privileged United States.
The ideas around burial in Western thought are often of “letting go” and “moving on.” In contrast, burial within Mayan and Latin American communities suggests a continued co-existence with the dead. Here, the men and children of Elambo Bajo break the land to symbolically bury the past in a post-colonial act embracing the harsh histories of slavery and genocide. They create a “living memory” to enter into a new century with assurance, self-determination and autonomy.
Elambo Bajo, in Chiapas, is an autonomous Zapatista community not far from San Cristobal de las Casas. Having declared its independence, the mostly indigenous population is removed from the turmoil found in cities with conflicting political parties. At the same time, this separation also leaves it without municipal services and government structures. A number of projects in Elambo Bajo examine the idea of autonomy on individual, communal, and political levels.
This work took place with EZLN community Elambo Bajo. This work is an investigation of how the body and simple actions can bring cycles of experienced tragedy into possibilities for healing individually and collectively. Caleb Duarte, Emory Douglas, and Mia Eva created an action in which indigenous Mayan children buried us: representatives of disenfranchised communities (Latino, Black, disabled) from the privileged United States.
The ideas around burial in Western thought are often of “letting go” and “moving on.” In contrast, burial within Mayan and Latin American communities suggests a continued co-existence with the dead. Here, the men and children of Elambo Bajo break the land to symbolically bury the past in a post-colonial act embracing the harsh histories of slavery and genocide. They create a “living memory” to enter into a new century with assurance, self-determination and autonomy.