Films by Sonya Dyer, Yuko Edwards, and Steffani Jemison: a screening for the Usdan Gallery exhibition “We Have Reach”
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OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | A special screening for the Usdan Gallery exhibition “We Have Reach” presents films by renowned artists Sonya Dyer, Yuko Edwards, and Steffani Jemison. Hosted by Bennington literature faculty Anaïs Duplan—whose group Studio AGD curated “We Have Reach”—the screening extends the exhibition’s considerations of the Black femme body claiming and taking up space. Duplan and Bennington student Edna Ndayisaba will facilitate a conversation with the audience after the screening.
Featured films are Sonya Dyer’s Andromeda (2021) and The Betsey-Drake Equation (2022); Yuko Edwards’s Politics from a Black Woman’s Insides (1997); and Steffani Jemison’s Figure 8 (2021).
In dialogue with historical muses including Henrietta Lacks and Anarcha Westcott, "We Have Reach" was conceptualized to facilitate conversation about the friction, endurance, and possibility of an empowered and expansive Black femme figure within her exterior environment. Exhibition themes include the extent of the body across time and space, fugitive movement and fugitive stillness, exploitative fecundity, and the longing of the Black feminine body and consciousness for heaven and home.
The curatorial group Studio AGD is a collaboration of Anaïs Duplan, poet Folasade Adesanya, and new media artist Zoe Butler. The exhibition "We Have Reach" is on view in Usdan Gallery through April 26.
Image: Still from Steffani Jemison, Figure 8 (2021)
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