2020

Photography taken at night where my body, in cultural mourning as a Black Woman and as a mother, became barely visible in glimpses of rememories, that is somebody else's memories. Holding myself in a space where the solitude of darkness and the visualising of pure darkness, illuminated my overacted self-sedating mind. It was at that moment just before sleep, in sleep and just before awakening that these memories of self and others returned. I was in a place I knew should not exist for anybody and yet it did. In a need to capture this moment and hold it up to the light, this time of night became the realm of existence for which I realised I had to be fully present for.

 

I had to learn to see in this darkness for not only was it familiar to my past ancestors, those of Blackness and those of Womanism, this form of hidden light pure and deep was the only true visibility of a reality I no longer wanted or had to hide. Darkness in its beauty was a rebirth. The darkness then clarified that which is to be truly looked at, our own bodies. 

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©Marcia Michael, Visual Artist, London