Video & LandBodyArt

performance art & non-narrative film making w/ video explorations

Krisekutya' (2022)

Williams_Emma_Final Draft.mp4

'Krisekutya investigates personal rituals.

Fishbird takes over the sky, watching over the cloaked figure who ritualistically moves and distorts its form. Collected rocks and sacred foliage become talismans for protection, play and healing.

a Rocky Prayer (2023)

A Rocky Prayer - a visual journal segment of time spent on the Tankwa Artscape Residency.

Rocks become shoes, become anchors, that take me up a 444-footstep path, up the horizon line of a hill, at dawn.

Performance Art | Land Body Art

Karoo KaKoon (2023)

Karoo KoKoon.mp4

Strong explores the nature of pace and patience, contemplating the idea of transformations, metamorphosis and outer-body dream experiences.

The desert slows everything down. The barrenness of the terracotta landscape offers an alternative experience to the overstimulating city-scape and digital world that explodes in size and dominance. There, in the desert dirt, under the infinite blue, Strong re-sets, cocoons and becomes a new. She attempts to reconnect to the rhythms of life by wrapping herself up in a bedsheet cocoon, restricting her body to stillness.

Forcing a Stop and a Slowing Down.

Digital Dreams (2023)

a collection of experimental films

The Sun is Black

an Iris

Eyeing my Orifice

(2023) Shot on a MobiCell feature phone.

In a pixelated reality a youth contemplates her relationship between an all seeing eye and a fly, that lands on her not-dead-yet face.

the sun was black_an iris_eyeing my orifice_

LEFT SCREEN_digital dreamsMWF_age_.mp4

Moon_Womb_Foot(age)

A diptych installed over two laptop screens.

(Should be played simultaneously)

right screen_digital dreams_MWF_age.mp4

Moon_Womb_Foot(age)

A diptych installed over two laptop screens.

(Should be played simultaneously)

ya_orange wounds.mp4

ya_orange wounds

a fever dream

Ode to FishBird (2023)

I spent some time at the river, floating on the rippling waters and diving deep, eyes widening, as I soared under the weight of the liquid.

I began to labour, drag, carry and pull heavy grey stone to form the outline of FishBird's shape. A monotonous task to allow myself time for rhythmic thinking. I become aware of Mendieta's Earth/Body Art's influence on my work, specifically that of Silueta Series (1972-1977); I mimic the way she builds forms with the Earth, as opposed to from it. She does not erect sculptures into the earths horizon, penetrating the fertile land- instead she molds and morphs the land, finding female forms within it (Wallis and Kastner, 2005:72).

Once FishBird's shape was built I noticed its size was my own. An Ode to FishBird, and all the beast that come with her.

Laying (2023)

laying flying still.mp4

The body purges, the body gives, the body lets go and yet, it holds.

Laying (2023) is a ritual-based-performance focused on the process of purging. I let go of two foreign objects that burden my body; a beaten, sharp rose quartz that inhibits me from talking and second, I release an egg-shaped rock locked within my vaginal canal.

This process is cathartic, raw and vulnerable.

As I expel these foreign objects from my system, I also purge the violence associated with their intrusive placement. Here I attempt to align my practice with the feminist understanding that the personal is political! (Zeitz, 2008:679). I situate myself within the current discourse surrounding Gender Based Violence in South Africa.

Within the performance, Strong morphs into a sculptural form, transforming from Woman to Insect/Object/Fish/Bird. The nude stockings, which restrict the body allows Strong to appear naked, whilst still distorting the natural line of her form. She is influenced by the early works of Ana Mendieta, specifically Glass on Body (1972) which explore the constructions of beauty, and the feminist issue of violence against women. She also looks towards Berni Searle's Snow White (2001), and the way in which the female becomes Other.

I Climbed Up A Pomegranate Tree (2024)

i climbed a pomegrante tree.mp4

Spoken Word accompanied by Video

Embodying the Beast (I and II) (2022)

Hooves (2022)

wood and leather

Embodying the Beast is a two-part performance, and sculptural/drawing collection that explores the beats within.

In this performance, Strong anthropomorphises internal battles in the shape of a Beast that resides within. Embodying The Beast (I and II) is a documentation of the internal and external fight Strong has with movement and inertia. She conducts a choreographed dance across fabric and newsprint, tapping into a feral animalistic side of herself as she morphs into a woman fighting with the beast. She wears wooden hooves that constrict the movement of her feet to make animal like foot-prints that map out the choregraphed fight/dance.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse