Sound Beings - Jaleesa Johnston in performance

R/SF is pleased to present the inaugural performance of Sound Beings, directed by Jaleesa Johnston and performed by Johnston, Tasha Ceyan, and Naomi Lee. For this 1-hour long durational piece, each artist will deliver highly personalized dialogues responding to notions of the black female body, made audible in diverse and multifarious ways (at times a poetic whisper, at times a roaring exchange). Physically enveloped by the architecture of the transformed gallery space, the performers’ layered voices and lacking visual content offer a cacophonous meditation on the complexities and intricacies of identity politics. Johnston’s work questions psychological constructions of representation and ultimately destabilizes current social structures that work to fix the black female body as object. Post-performance, visitors are left with the lingering presence of the installation's physical armature, and the ambient, almost subliminal, repetition of pure narration. Forced to reconcile with the void of presence left behind, visitors are invited to encounter their own reflection within a dialogue that is ultimately ours to grapple with en masse.

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Bio -->
Jaleesa Johnston is a mixed media artist living in Marin. She holds a BA from Vassar College and is currently completing her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work explores the black female body as both subject and material through performance, video, photography, sculpture and collage. Jaleesa's work interrogates the defining power of the gaze and its relationship to the formation and destruction of the psychology of blackness.