Re-Membering is the Responsibility of the Living
Exhibit Summary:
Can we grow gardens out of graves? How can we recycle the energy of protest, rage, and grief into creating a world where indeed Black Lives Matter? What is the role of memory in our movement build and work? And who will be responsible for this labor? These are the questions that haunt the work of visual and performing arts artist Taja Lindley.
As a memory worker, Lindley explores what has been abandoned, erased, silenced, or distorted in our individual and collective consciousness. Moved by the non-indictments of the police officers responsible for the deaths of Eric Gardner and Michael Brown in 2014, Lindley developed This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering. This performance-based work served as the precursor for The Bag Lady the Manifesta – an interdisciplinary project that combines ritual performance, film, and installation.
The Big Lady is a primordial figure who communes with the ancestors and emerges from the rubble of forgotten histories. Through this central figure, Lindley draws parallels between discarded materials and the violent treatment of Black people in the United States. Rooting her creative process in research about Black lives that have been stolen, she transforms what has been considered disposable into something sacred.
Taja Lindley
Lindley is a memory worker, healer, and activist. Through iterative and interdisciplinary practices, she creates socially engaged artwork that reflects and transforms audiences, shifts culture, and moves people to action.
She uses movement, text, installation, ritual, burlesque, and multi-media to create immersive works that are concerned with freedom, healing, and pleasure. Since 2014 she has developed a body of work recycling and repurposing discarded materials.
