E. Jane

  • Home
  • SCRAAATCH
  • About
  • Contact
  • Home
  • SCRAAATCH
  • About
  • Contact

#Mood Exercises (2015-) is a series of quick, spontaneous and/or improvised vignettes using Apple Photobooth’s User Backdrop and my body in domestic space. They function as a way for me to think about, perform and record a range of physical and emotional gestures, which I feel is vital for me to do as a Black woman slave descendant, as recorded or acknowledged range of emotion and action is often denied to us by the popular imaginary. Generally they are posted with the hashtag #mood on my social media feeds. The series is ongoing. 

​One of the catalysts for this series was Claudia Rankine's essay "The Meaning of Serena Williams: On Tennis and Black Excellence", published August 2015 in New York Times Magazine. ​An excerpt from that essay :

"For black people, there is an unspoken script that demands the humble absorption of racist assaults, no matter the scale, because whites need to believe that it’s no big deal. But Serena refuses to keep to that script. Somehow, along the way, she made a decision to be excellent while still being Serena. She would feel what she feels in front of everyone, in response to anyone. At Wimbledon this year, for example, in a match against the home favorite Heather Watson, Serena, interrupted during play by the deafening support of Watson, wagged her index finger at the crowd and said, ‘‘Don’t try me.’’ She will tell an audience or an official that they are disrespectful or unjust, whether she says, simply, ‘‘No, no, no’’ or something much more forceful, as happened at the U.S. Open in 2009, when she told the lineswoman, ‘‘I swear to God I am [expletive] going to take this [expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat.’’ And in doing so, we actually see her. She shows us her joy, her humor and, yes, her rage. She gives us the whole range of what it is to be human, and there are those who can’t bear it, who can’t tolerate the humanity of an ordinary extraordinary person."

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.