3436

OHEMAA DIXON
November 6 – December 31, 2020

“3436” is an immersive multimedia installation created in response to an experience of the book “Without Sanctuary”.  From the late 1880s to the early 1950s thousands of African Americans were lynched in the United States –––3,436 according to the Tuskegee Institute. These horrendous acts, parts of the American history canon, were photographed and recorded, and have produced an intensely graphic and traumatic archive. The resulting trauma of these acts and the corresponding visual archive are embedded in African-American existence.

As the culmination of my thoughts up to this point, 3436 utilizes the mechanisms of Afro-Futurist thought and other critical theory texts as a means to respond to the trauma presented in this archive. The work proposes a way in which the notion of black floating bodies can be reconfigured in a way that allows us to understand the deep trauma of this history while building a new realm for the visual language of these photographs. 

There are a myriad of ways we human beings heal from trauma and absorb information around ourselves. Gathering inspiration from the new wave of immersive art, the installation seeks to engage our senses in various ways. Our ears are one of our few sensory organs that remain open without obstruction. Thus, the use of sound, specifically a solfeggio frequency soundscape by Yoshii Swxdn, expands the way in which we contextualize our own relation to these histories. The silk on which the images are printed allows the pieces and bodies to be dynamic, they flow with the air in the space as you move through it. 

Using photography, sound, and installation — “3436” unveils new ways in which traumatic imagery can be transgressed.