New bklyn boihood blog post by Khi Baldwin @theGAQ (.com) read the full article and check out the videos by clicking here!
limchoy lee’s bio says that she is currently interested in “recoding the symbols used in shaping attitudes towards women of color in the media”. She goes on to say that she is “most interested in complex social situations and the transparency of the lines separating one point of view from the other.” In order to accomplish this, much of lee’s approach in her work has been to use opposing images - making the viewer think about the contradiction; and in turn question both perspectives.
Take for instance her video “Feminist or Womanist”. In this video she takes strip club and music video footage and chops it up with Staceyann Chin saying: “Am I a Feminist or a Womanist?” from her poem of the same title. The viewer is forced to think about Chin’s poem while looking at these hyper-sexualized images of Black women in the media. To me, Chin’s poem is about having to choose between one thing or another; to fit into a box - Girl or boy, Buddist or Christian, Straight or gay, etc. She says:
“The truth is I’m afraid to draw your black lines around me, I’m not always pale in the middle, I come in too many flavors for one fucking spoon. I am never one thing or the other. At night I am everything I fear, tears and sorrows, black windows and muffled screams. In the morning, I am all I ever want to be: rain and laughter, bare footprints and invisible seams, always without breath or definition. I claim every single dawn, for yesterday is simply what I was, and tomorrow even that will be gone.”……
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