STATES OF BECOMING
STATES OF BECOMING opened last Friday at the KMA, examining African diaspora and personhood in the process of assimilation into the United States. The most poignant work—impactful, rousing, almost hypnotic—was the video installation “Between the Voids” by Yvonne Osei @eve_of_on. Created to evoke conversation and confrontation, the diptych video investigates the polarity regarding the perception of blackness and whiteness, especially between Ghana (her home country) and the U.S. Human identity exists on a spectrum: the purity of whiteness is a colonial myth, as is the unprincipled quality of blackness.
“As a native of the Ashanti Kingdom,” Osai writes on her website, “[I celebrate] blackness as a source of pride and beauty, contrasting it with the discrimination and criminalization of black people [I have] observed in the U.S.”
“Between the Voids” by Yvonne Osei
The footage is visceral and raw—weighted with emotion. Osai confronts the viewer with her gaze, and the formal quality of her dark eyes against the white paint strikes the viewer. As Osai claws at her skin, treading and scraping nails through thick swaths of paint, disrupting these two extreme constructs in hope to reveal her true self. She places the discord upon her body—already a site of colonialism—rendering a conflict that is often conceptual, intellectualized into something that is tangible, witnessed. It is a powerful ode to her heritage, revisiting body scarifications and adornments used in her native Ashanti culture of Ghana as a source of true identity.
the performance is inherently against resolution…as no victory is met.
“Between the Voids” by Yvonne Osei
In many ways, the footage unsettles and agitates, piercing the otherwise static atmosphere of the white-cubed gallery. Especially as one adorns the headphones, Osai’s breath washes over your body as a wave, entrancing you into the struggle that is emotionally and physiologically distressing.
Never is Osai completely able to wipe the paint from her skin; the performance is inherently against resolution in this way, used to frustrate the audience as no victory is met. This invitation to internal conflict, thus, moves the viewer towards a nuanced homeostasis of embodied knowing.
