portfolio | about
2023
|
Hidirtna/ Sisters (excerpt): stop action animation, paint and video projection on canvas, 9' 14" |
21st Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, Brazil |
Created at Trestle's Visiting Artist Residency
Folklorist Alan Dundes describes a mythology as "a story that serves to define the fundamental worldview of a culture by explaining aspects of the natural world and delineating the psychological and social practices and ideals of a society". For this project I sent out an open call for folklore to a Habesha diaspora (Ethiopian and Eritrean) New York City community email group. This project is a means to memorize, recollect and share knowledge, morals and dreams from ones cultural heritage. In this project I also incorporated the process of developing the animation itself, such as email communications, cafe meeting, and a brief portrait of the storyteller. This is a means to highlight that folklore, like traditional cultures, are not static, they are always losing and gaining. Animation resonates with this state of transformation, always morphing into something new. Due to their open interpretation, each retelling is original, this project being just one version in their continuous reformation. Synopsis: One day a hunter named Yohanes came into the woods for hunting. One of the sisters followed him and fell in love. He came across a deer and kneeled down to hunt her. After he killed the dear, the sister who loved him told him that if he claimed onto a certain tree he would be saved. He took a piece from the tree and by carrying it lived for many years protected from the curse. One day he dropped his protective piece of wood into the river.
|
Exhibition 2019: "Imagined Communities", 21st Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, Sao Pulo, Brazil Medium(s), La Box, National School of Art of Bourges, Bourges, France 2018: Prizm Art fair, Miami, FL "Tales of Home", Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA |
|
Copyright © 2022, Ezra Wube