Body-mapping as a creative and collective process.
A body map is an outline of a person’s body. Inside the outline, and maybe even outside of it, there are words, slogans, pictures and symbols that tell a story.
Artist Jae Gayle revolutionizes the application of body-mapping as a means to co-create a communal healing practice directly with communities and as a way to collect oral histories from that community.
The collection of narratives from Black women will be used by Gayle to produce an original performance script integrating African American folktales, music, and poetry.
Example #1 – Accepting Rage – in this example, the storyteller wanted to keep her rage as fuel. She expressed a desire to keep despite often being told to dampen her fire.
Example #2 – Breakthrough – in this example the storyteller had a breakthrough about how she viewed money in relationships.
Jae Gayle is facilitating sessions in Albany, NY and Oakland, CA to directly engage communities in creating this communal practice and to collect 150 stories from Black women.
This innovative process addresses two pressing problems:
- The Problem of Isolated Healing. In our over medicated, over self helped individualistic culture we have moved away from collective thinking and therefore collective healing. Our communities have suffered deep trauma in recent decades with little to no communal healing and true reconciliation. While we may make individual strides, the culture is sick, and we must work collectively to heal it. This project works with communities to develop a process to help us heal.
- The Problem of Collection. Researchers tend to not be Black women. Whether in history, sociology, psychology, or economy, or anything else, it is clear that bias against women and particularly misogynoir deeply impacts how we perceive Black women. This project is designed for Black women to tell us how they want to be seen.
Example #3 – Shedding Weights – in this example, the storyteller described the weight of having to be a perfect mom because she was young and single.
After collecting 150 narratives, and conducting deep historical research, Gayle will construct full length body-maps on semi-reflective surfaces as well as three dimensional body outline silhouettes of Black women to tell their experiences of America over 250 years.
