"Sunlight Around the Corner" Multimedia Installation Unveils on Jan. 19th
The multimedia installation is part of a larger project envisioned and curated by Alicia Aroche and will be available for viewing on our website on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. The artwork above was created by Amanda Barnes.
For Tuesday's #NationalDayofRacialHealing2021, we honor, remember and engage in rituals that serve to fortify, inspire and heal African diaspora connection.
Sunlight Around the Corner, is a multimedia storytelling project that engages visuals, sound and movement envisioned and curated by Alicia Aroche, Director of U.S. Programs, Racial Justice and Healing for IofC USA. The project was inspired by the stories of Richmond City Health District Community Health Workers and Community Advocates who serve on the frontline every day.
On Jan. 19th, we unveil a virtual installation on our website of sound art and experimental films entitled Still, Release and Liberation, inspired by the stories from the original oral history interviews of the community health workers and advocates. The sound art meditations are created by Bianca Mońa, a Barbados-based artist, curator and scholar and the films are designed Amanda Barnes, Arts Alchemist with IofC USA.
Through this work, Bianca Mońa reminds us that our African ancestors used movement, particularly dance, to bring us into meditative, trance-like state. Also, in weaving traditional Indigenous chanting from the Americas, she acknowledges our intertwined destinies in the Americas, and hopes to continue to inspire a growing solidarity.
“All forms of my creative expressions are about generating, documenting and sharing firsthand narratives. From the source, I use both audio and visual outlets to capture the lives, the contributions, the hopes, and the fears of living beings.
These beings are those that may not make it into the history books, or the canon, yet are significant and grand. My hope is through creating storytelling platforms, the narrator experiences release while the listener is stimulated and expanded. My art honors the ordinary extraordinarily. It’s communal. It’s continuous. It’s liberation.”
“The visual pieces are a conversation with what Bianca created. They layer one another through imagery, effects, and coloring; all forces of the senses coming together. The visuals are a kaleidoscope of sensory journeys that are pungent and engage viewers to discover. As you watch and listen, there is something new, a different angle, a transformation of a normal day experience.”
Visit the Story Map here.
The installation also features the Community Health Worker and Community Advocates Story Map, developed in collaboration with the VCU Center on Society and Health and the VCU Wright Center. This map overlays stories told by these narrators, to show where these lives, inequities and disparities are lived and further amplify and articulate the condition in which the narrators of this project had to navigate and overcome for ongoing transformation.
Stay tuned for films and multimedia content coming through the La Ceiba Festival in the coming weeks.