InLight Exhibition

This past weekend, frequent collaborator Qiaira Riley and I traveled to Richmond, VA for an outdoor, at-night, and light-based exhibition called INlight with @1708gallery on the historic Pine Camp grounds. Today the space is one of the largest recreation centers in Richmond but in 1936, the site was home to a Black infirmary. We wanted to lean into the history of the grounds as a space for healing as well as place of leisure/play so we researched common medicinal herbs in the area and created a large zoetrope referencing a playground roundabout. This zoetrope was created using laser engraved panels of acrylic featuring animations I made using paper collage methods. The animation features archival imagery of children playing ring around the Rosie and a time lapse of a dandelion in bloom to illustrate the parallel themes of our project. In addition we created three UV-light exposure boxes and invited guests to create fabric cyanotypes featuring herbal remedies with herbs native to Virginia, written by our friend Ona. All of this was done in pitch black and in the middle of the woods. Special thanks to our fabricator Stewart Everett @stewartmakesstuff , who took my sketch and made it into a reality and then some.