Navigating

“I have been working to incorporate in the manner of telling a sense of place, of not just who I am in the present but where I am coming from, the multiple voices within me. I have confronted silence,inarticulateness. When I say, then, that these works emerge from suffering, I refer to that personal struggle to name that …location from which I come to voice.” Bell Hooks

My latest exhibition Navigating this American landscape is a continued narrative of Comfort Kills Pursuit, Fear Kills Pursuit series and the last installation yet to be announced. Navigating is an exhibit of works that have minimal concern with the actual physical landscape of America. The landscape I continue to navigate is one of personal mental space from the perspective of a black male growing and residing in Americas historically tormented South. As a child, in Alabama, I remember the Klan boldly handing out propaganda for its cause one Sunday morning.They positioned themselves at a four way stop like many firemen and little league cheerleaders do today. At this moment, one is faced with 4 directional choices, my family continued forward. This image has never left me.

These works are a continuation of my interest with processes within brain. Specifically, the functions of the Limbic System that aid in emotions, spontaneity ,creativity and long term memory. The Neocortex that contributes to abstract thought, consciousness and imagination or the higher thought. The work explores the mental relationships of objects and those objects relationships to history and culture. The works are an on going investigation of rural voice, rural aesthetic and urban culture. Im am fascinated by Southernism and the Souths new found identity after the ending of Segregation. The wanting to constantly define its self through the failed Civil War, slavery and the mythical old South of Gone with the Wind. I continue to question how these events, myths and attitudes still influence American society.

I use the idea of the remix and sampling of words like the works of early hip hop. As images fire rapidly through the television in the video work of this exhibit, my intentions are illustrated clearly about my process, my concerns, and the mental mapping of this voyage. The mental rollerdex of imagery play out within the dialog of the gallery works. Images shuffle and become congested and the information quickly transforms into new narratives. Every three to four frames a new story begins and ends. Information is in and information is out leaving the viewer to hold on to the few cultural icons that are recognizes to create whole the stories events. It is the history of images that flash within the Limbic system that are under exploration.

I have collected materials and formed a relationship with them. Then derived my work from these relationships, experiences and conversations. Clashing histories, theories, hybridizing, mixing and remixing the narrative and iconography is my continued modes of working and myth building.

MICHIMEKO