On slave ships sailing the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the so-called New World, enslaved men and women, crammed into the unsanitary hull, were fed foul beans meant for horses and mixed with flour and seasonings to disguise the wretched taste. The oceanic sounds, accompanied by excerpts read from Robert Hayden’s poem “Middle Passage” and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ meditation Undrowned, create a fitting ambiance for entry into the mythic Drexciya, the underwater realm populated by the children of the pregnant women who during the trans-Atlantic slave trade jumped or were thrown overboard. Jackson swims fluidly through the undercurrents of the ocean with an undulating danced movement.
Marked with white tribal body paint, the American photographer, filmmaker and installation artist Ayana V.