Welancora Gallery is delighted to announce our participation in Art Basel Miami Beach 2024 with a solo presentation of photographs by historian and photographer Deborah Willis.
Created in 2018 and 2020, Deborah Willis' series of photographs, Meditation On Joan Baez's Civil War, Sundays in Harlem and the Clothesline Series, are timely visual frameworks for understanding America's past, present and future. Utilizing the projection of a film she directed and conveived as the backdrop, Willis foregrounds the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers framed in the act of a waltz. With the dancers frozen in space and time, and their silhouettes looming large, Willis signals the conflict in a relationship between a man and a woman as a guidepost for imagining and reimagining the American Civil War.
In these works, Willis captures a past collective memory of conflict that reflects the present day, where the contemporary American political climate holds up a grim resemblance to the ills that gave rise to the Civil War. By incorporating projected visuals from 19th-century archives, works by Gordon Parks and Hank Willis Thomas, and her own photographs, Willis seeks to emphasize clothing, objects, memory and storytelling through gesture and movement, while reclaiming the body’s agency through the practice of resilience.
Her Sundays in Harlem series acts as a witness to the memory of an older Harlem. As the neighborhood continues to undergo changes, Willis chooses to illuminate the joyous scenes of church celebrations - a uniting space of safety and spiritual solace for much of the Black community. Her Clothesline Series was created during 2020, the year of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Images foregrounding the women leading the movement and women from the present day are superimposed onto cloth; this installation, reminiscent of The Clothesline Project, is a reflection on the years of struggle and perseverance.
Public Days
Friday, December 6, 2024, 11am to 6pm
Saturday, December 7, 2024, 11am to 6pm
Sunday, December 8, 2024, 11am to 6pm
Purchase a ticket directly from Art Basel's website here.
