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Jamilah Sabur (b. 1987, St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica) lives and works in Miami. Metaphysics, geology, and memory are recurrent themes in the work of Jamilah Sabur. In her practice, the artist employs a distinct poetics, reframing territory and nationality. She explores the temporary nature of existence and our fleeting presence in it, a thread that connects us all. A new planetary literacy emerges in her work, where alternate geographies become possible as submerged histories are revealed. Several galleries and institutions have exhibited her work, such as Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit. Sabur earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (2009), and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego (2014). Her work is included in the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art and Pérez Art Museum Miami. Sabur will be included in the upcoming U.S. triennial Prospect 5 New Orleans.


Works


1.

Obra, 2020 

digital video, color, sound, 03:17

Obra (2020) reflects upon metaphysical practices in Jamaica. The video combines scenes recorded at The Cardiff Hall, a former plantation in Saint Ann Parish and the Spanish Town mosque, built in the mid-twentieth century by an Indian immigrant Mohammed Khan. With imagery of white tunics, beekeeping suits, and the Ethiopian flag; together, they create a serene tapestry draped across the Jamaican landscape.

Obra was commissioned by New Orleans Film Festival 2020 with generous support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.


2.

rhombus: above Lake Apopka North Shore, 2017

digital video, color, sound, 04:33

In rhombus: above Lake Apopka North Shore, (2017), Sabur performs a ritual on the highest point in Florida, connecting home to Jamaica with a fluttering silk thread. The diamond/rhombus form that appears in the video is used to frame the highest point geologically in Florida. It began as a shape above the door of her mother’s childhood home, so using it here opens an exchange of memories if not energy between the two places. 


3.

rhombus: cradling Mars west of the Sargasso Sea, 2017

digital video, color, sound, duration 01:50

Sabur performs a ritual on the northeast coast of Florida in Anastasia State Park, located west of the Sargasso Sea, a region of the North Atlantic Ocean bounded by four currents forming an ocean gyre. Sabur describes the rhombus shape as an extension of her body, it is a symbol that has accumulated meaning over the years and through her practice. In this work the rhombus is used to cradle Mars, the solar system planet that was easily visible to her at dawn without an optical aid and that has been watched by our ancestors since time immemorial.  

 

4.

Tidal locking, 2019

digital video, color, sound, 04:59

Enamored with ocean landscapes, Sabur imagines the speculative subsurface ocean world of Triton, the largest moon of the planet Neptune, and the only large moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet's rotation. Continuing her explorations in movement, geology, and planetary geology, the sequences in her stream of consciousness vertical film are inspired by a phenomenon known as tidal locking and the rudimentary cell structures of oceans.


5.

Playing Possum, 2012 

digital video, black and white, sound, duration 09:54

“Elijah Rock by Mahalia Jackson was playing in the studio and I slipped into a trance where the only goal was “becoming.” When a possum is under threat, it plays dead to avoid death. The space in the studio became a world I felt close to— I was underwater on the moon. In composing the video during the editing process, I composed a score for the first two-thirds but used American composer Jon Forshee’s score “Sinew” as the structure to edit the video. I wanted to create an atmosphere in the video that appears to be like the changes in ambient pressure, like what happens to a body that slips into the cold airless void, when the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space or deep water—sudden depressurization.” Jamilah Sabur

“Elijah Rock by Mahalia Jackson was playing in the studio and I slipped into a trance where the only goal was “becoming.” When a possum is under threat, it plays dead to avoid death. The space in the studio became a world I felt close to— I was underwater on the moon. In composing the video during the editing process, I composed a score for the first two-thirds but used American composer Jon Forshee’s score “Sinew” as the structure to edit the video. I wanted to create an atmosphere in the video that appears to be like the changes in ambient pressure, like what happens to a body that slips into the cold airless void, when the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space or deep water—sudden depressurization.” Jamilah Sabur

digital video, black and white, sound, duration 09:54

  • Year
    2012
  • Runtime
    10 minutes
  • Director
    Jamilah Sabur
  • Screenwriter
    Jamilah Sabur