The Black in The White
Brianne Hunte is a video and film artist. Her work explores and investigates memory, technology, race, and the ever-changing political landscape we live in. Her recent work, "The Black in the White", is a video and performance interpretation of her research into how black bodies move in white spaces and societies.
As a small part of a larger exploration of blackness in white society, this video of Hunte performing in a white space addresses the questions she has towards how to move in white dominated spaces. From the origins of blackness and the position black bodies find themselves in today. Where does her body has power and how does it affect her perception and how she is perceived? The performance was an intimation of how black bodies move in white spaces and how they also blend into other black bodies in these spaces. From looking at black bodies being colonized in America, to the present need to readjust our language and behaviour, Hunte provides a small insight into the “dance” black people, and people of colour, perform in order to survive in white society.This work incorporates the power in blackness and how it is in flux and flows throughout society. From investigating her own body through performance, she looks at her body as an entity of Blackness, a vessel that carries the histories of the Black women before her. Her exploration is not over, and she continues with the grandest question of all of them: Where do we go from here?
Hunte's work addresses the themes of identity, memories, otherness, representation, histories, and futures. How do young Black people connect and traverse in our environments in ways that those before us could not? We live in a time of social awareness and representation we have never seen before; we are given access to tell our own stories from our own mouths and bodies. We have a new control over our narratives, and as artists, we have a responsibility to be authentic. Being Black artists in a white dominated career field, and a white dominated society, begs to question how do Black people navigate our bodies, our work, and our histories and how we research and present them. As Black artists, how do we navigate our power and its variances in our everyday lives and in our practices?
Submitted by Brianne Hunte.