memory of nothing

(ongoing)

 
 
 

The portrait series, memory of nothing, was inspired by the resilience of my own intercultural partnership in the constant wake of racial tensions in the US.  I wanted to counter my own fears of the dangers of racism with a visual conversation of Love that transcends prejudicial constructs.  When I began this work in 2017, I learned that year marked the 50 year anniversary of the landmark US Supreme Court case of Loving vs Virginia that reversed “anti-miscegenation laws”, making it legal for human beings in the United States to simply love each other, raise families, bridge communities, and blend cultures, while building lives together.  But still - skin, nationality, and cultures continue to be painfully political, and radical to some when they are mixed, spurring violent clashes we see in our world today.

This project features interracial and intercultural couples from different countries, accompanied by a series of video interviews where couples offer beautiful accounts of their union contrasted with micro/aggressive projections they sometimes encounter.  Without the colonial histories conquest, slavery, and pillage that formed bordered nations rife with racial divisions, - would we see each other differently?  Would we love differently?  How can we live together beyond the borders of internalized prejudice or love deeper than the skin?  What power dynamics do we need to overturn or (un)learn, what do we need to remember, to forget, or forgive, so we are free to see beyond our collective scars?  Skin is political, and even radical to some when it is mixed. Exposing these multigenerational stories of intimate unions, performs as aspiration, imagination and possibility over separatism, as counter-resistant examples which oppose the orthodoxy of racialized histories and potentially transcend social prejudices.  Rejecting divisive social constructions through love has become our only hope for survival, exemplifying that Love can also be a powerful symbol of resistance. 

 

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Copyright © Berette Macaulay 2024