dana washington-queen

dana washington-queen is an artist whose work intersects experimental film and documentary practices, portrait photography, prose-poetry, and theoretical writing. Research interests include black feminist scholarship, black aesthetics, queer theory, and film theory to examine negotiations of race, gender, sexuality, language, and representation. Thematically, washington-queen explores narratives within black sociological histories, cultural expressions, and sites of memory and fiction.

Untitled (I Know The Lord Will Make A Way, Oh Yes He Will) is a three-channel video exploring geographic and cultural movement of song through embodied performance. The archival footage shifts between renditions of Eugene Smith’s “I Know the Lord Will Make A Way, Oh Yes He Will” (1941) to emphasize performance, embodiment and meaning. The gospel blues composition follows a four-line poem structure, with a narrative hinged on utopian wishes – hope and reassurance, common motifs in black political and cultural expression. In conjunction with the video, Untitled (Dreams Are Transitory Things) is a custom fabric banner that explores the immateriality of anticipation through religious iconography. The text phrase derives from a comparative exegesis of Hebrews 11:1, “Kitchenette Building” by poet Gwendolyn Brooks and “Dreams” by artist Solange, each work being entangled in the intangible.