Between Beauty & Horror

BETWEEN BEAUTY & HORROR

Between Beauty & Horror investigates the inseparable relationship between the sublime and the terrible through the lens of Black experience. The installation manifests as a spatial diptych: two parallel corridors divided by a constructed wall, connected yet separated by panes of two-way tempered glass. This architectural intervention creates a physical embodiment of simultaneous visibility and opacity, reflection and transparency.

The video work weaves a poetic narrative that positions abjection, violence, and eroticism as the binding agents between beauty and horror—elements fundamentally embedded in Black lived experience. Through the recurring motif of the blackberry fruit, the installation maps an eco-geography of Blackness, examining how sensorial and somatic experiences create distinctly racialized materialities.

By exploring these dualities through both architectural space and moving image, the work invites viewers to navigate the charged territory between attraction and repulsion, desire and fear, revealing how these apparent opposites are inextricably bound within the Black experience.

KQED Feature, “Leila Weefur Renders Black Experience Dreamlike in ‘Between Beauty & Horror’ By Sarah Hotchkiss