Date of Award

Spring 6-3-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Digital Media

First Advisor

Mark Cetilia

Second Advisor

k. funmilayo aileru

Third Advisor

Ebony L. Haynes

Abstract

This thesis offers a performative methodology to engaging with the worlds and ideas that these words have generated in the form of a glossary. The list of words include: Ancestor, Anointing, Attune, Breath, Conjure, Conversion, Dance, Erotic, Ephemera, Ethervism, God, Girlhood, Hallelujah, Imagination, Improvisation, Jazz, Knowledge, Love, Liturgical, Magic, Memory, Performance, Prayer, Remnant, Repetition, Ritual, Root, Sacred/Secular, Silence/Stillness, Sound, Spell, Spirit, Testimony, Water, and Witness. Personal reflections, contemplations and expansions from other writing, and passages that come out of Black feminist thought, Black girlhood studies, and Black performance theory exist here simultaneously. This glossary demonstrates the theory, theology and lineages that are integral to my artistic vision, how I will always consider Spirit in what I do. The dance is in embodying and manifesting that in which defies definition. I believe this is present in our bodies, our lives, what we create, who we emanate, our research, that in which we hold close, our beliefs, and so much more.

Comments

View exhibition online: Kamari Smalls, Pretty's Forest

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