Le’Andra LeSeur to perform at Spiral with “Ain’t I” body of work
Returning after gaining attention for her work at The Fed Galleries last fall during ArtPrize, the new videos and performance piece draw from U.S. slave history, contemporary rape culture, and the failure of white feminism to incorporate the black experience.
“Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me!” — Sojourner Truth, at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851.
Le’Andra LeSeur returns to Grand Rapids this Friday for an exhibition at Spiral, a gallery in the Avenue for the Arts on South Division. While her ArtPrize 9 piece “Searching” at The Fed Galleries at KCAD in 2017 raised a bit of controversy, LeSeur’s most recent work takes things to a whole new level of uncomfortable.
The videos and performance she’ll present at Spiral draw from U.S. slave history, contemporary rape culture, and the failure of white feminism to incorporate the black experience, among other topics. In many of her pieces LeSeur inserts her own body as the fulcrum of debate. You might even say LeSeur embodies discord. She is Black and she is a woman. In U.S. history, the two are treated as if they are mutually exclusive.
“For a long time,” LeSeur says, “I’ve always put blackness over womanhood… If someone did something to me that was malicious, I always assumed it was because I was black, not because I was a woman. But you are black and a woman simultaneously. Why are there black women who are not being listened to? Why are their stories dismissed?”
In the currents of the #metoo movement, LeSeur desires to be heard on her own terms. In “Ain’t I Monologue,” the artist sits before a camera recalling her experiences of sexual harassment. This on-screen exposure underlines the media’s power in determining a victim’s credibility, while simultaneously utilizing the art institution as a validating structure for her own voice.
LeSeur further affirms her authority by situating herself among other Black women who have come before her. bell hooks’ writings are an especially strong influence, a constant reminder that intersectionality is and should be at the forefront of a feminist discourse. Howardena Pindell’s “Free, White, and 21” directly inspired LeSeur’s “Ain’t I Monologue.”
This Friday LeSeur will also perform a reenactment of Sojourner Truth’s famed “Ain’t I a Woman” dialog. Bare before flashing lights, LeSeur will expose her contentious skin, all the while demanding, “Ain’t I a woman?” The timed flares hypnotically reveal and conceal the artist’s body, not unlike police strobes during routine arrests. This recurring blind-reveal-blind-reveal pattern mimics LeSeur’s desire to be seen and not seen, heard and not heard.
“I want people to know what it feels like,” she says. “If you are walking in these shoes, you are not comfortable.”
Her vulnerability extends to the audience. In the presence of one another, audience and artist cannot sidestep the obvious: Will we believe LeSeur’s stories, or dismiss them? Will we even listen?
Attend the “Ain’t I” opening and performance at Spiral
Friday, March 2
6–9 p.m.
44 Division Avenue South
RSVP + more details on the Facebook event
*This exhibit will feature graphic content
