This/Their/Our
Video: Off/Out/Down, 2016, Three-Channel video
3 of 6 videos featured in This/Their/Our, an installation in the 2016 Mills MFA Thesis Exhibition
Installation View: Letterpress Prints, Chapbook, Sculpture and Video
© 2016 Leila Weefur. All rights reserved.
This work takes its inspiration from a pivotal moment in Claudia Rankine's 2016 AWP keynote address, where she performed a subtle but significant revision of her poem "Sound & Fury." Originally published in The New Yorker with the line "In daylight this right to righteous rage doubles down the supremacy of white in this way," Rankine altered the final word from "this" to "their" in writing, and then to "our" in her verbal delivery. This deliberate shift in pronouns reinforced her argument that racism implicates all people within its system.
My work builds upon Rankine's strategy of poetic revision as a tool for social reimagining. Through this exhibition, I explore how linguistic alterations can create new frameworks for understanding and representing Black bodies, suggesting that the careful revision of language might offer pathways toward reimagining Black experience and identity.
