Mythical Mother 9th - 30th September
Marcia Michael.
Artist Statement: Before Memory Returns (2020)
It is said that the night which symbolises innocence and vulnerability represents the feminine principle of heightened unconscious or psychic powers. It is the time where for most the soul submerges and instigates conversations with the various levels of unconsciousness that seek to rewrite and renew our knowledge of our intuitive selves. The ability to not see with the use of light aligns our true essence with all. Is it not the light that alters perception? Is in not darkness that enables light to be seen? Is it not this darkness that also presents the moon (a different king of light) where the feminine principle of time and seeing is given power to birth and rebirth? It is within good reason that Hesiod the Greek poet called mythological night "the mother of the gods"
Within these photographs taken at night, where my body in cultural mourning as a Black woman and as a mother became barely visible in glimpses of rememories, that is somebody else's memories. Becoming the myth for those whom I belong to, I created version of Sun Ra’s presence of the living myth. I had to learn to see in this darkness, creating the myth which may have been familiar to my ancestors; those of Blackness and those of Womanism. In this form of veiled light, deepness and darkness was the only true visibility of a reality I no longer wanted or had to hide.
Sun Ra’s expression that: I do not come to you as a reality, I come to you as the myth because that is what black people are: myths”, touched my heart as my body in those dark nights yearned for a creation of something new. This darkness in its beauty was a rebirth. It is and was the darkness then clarified that which is to be truly looked at as a presence, our own bodies.
Under a clouding Sky
Under a Sable Greying Sky
Under a Darkening Sky
Under a Mahogany Sky
Under an Indigo Sky
Under a Dusting Sky
Under a Shadowing Sky
Under a Sunkissed Darkened Sky
Marica Michael’s practice challenges the presence of the black subject within the auspices of the canonical family archive and album. Marcia received an MA with Distinction from London College of Communication in 2009, and a BA (Hons) in Photography from the University of Derby in 1996. Recent solo exhibitions include I am Now You - Mother, at Autograph ABP, London, Encontros da Imagem, International Photography and Visual Arts Festival, Museu Da Imagem, Braga, Portugal and Femmes Feroces: Material Life X Femmes Noires, The Contemporary Arts Centre, New Orleans, USA.