August 15th – October 31st, 2024, Massy Arts will host, while we find place, a window display by emerging multi(non)disciplinary artist Lee Ingram.
The window display features the latest iteration of frozen cradle, a 7-minute experimental and interdisciplinary performance project. frozen cradle intertwines poetry, dance, percussion, and layered voice recordings to honor the strong (and sometimes stubborn) matriarchal figures in my Jamaican lineage. Developed in collaboration with sound designer Owen Fairbairn, the score evolved through an intuitive and organic process, with all sounds originating from my body and breath. This piece has been showcased in diverse settings, including various venues, online journals, and radio broadcasts.
while we find place delves into my research and interpretation of ceremonial and traditional materials/objects, as well as the symbolic motifs within the narrative. My artistic practice is concerned with forms of storytelling that relate to memory, myth, spirituality, solitude, freedom, and healing. In recent years, I’ve become increasingly aware of the absence of storytelling and Afro-diasporic folklore and traditions within my family. The urgency in my work arises from my desire to witness creative explorations, especially among the youth in my life. I see myself as a storyteller, tasked with the responsibility of restructuring and reinterpreting the fragmented narratives of our past. My aim is to facilitate collective healing, nourished with a profound sense of ancestral reverence and support. Each item in while we find place serves as a fragment of a broader narrative that my artistic practice is continually exploring. These fragments function as symbols–they do not, or perhaps cannot, fully represent the entirety of the narrative. As a person of the Diaspora with very little record or access to familial memory, I rely on a felt-sense and intuitive wisdom housed in my body. It is through movement, dance, and the language of percussion that I piece together these fragments. while we find place endeavors to carve out space for weaving the threads of identity, family, culture, and personal mythology–themes intricately woven into the fabric of frozen cradle.
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This project is supported by the British Columbia Arts Council.
The Massy Arts Gallery is located at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday, 12pm to 5pm.
Entrance is free, and masks are mandatory.
To contact the gallery, send an email to: info@massyarts.com
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To celebrate the exhibition, Curator Faune Ybarra interviews artist Lee Ingram for Massy Arts.
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Lee Ingram – Relish in the unknown
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Faune Ybarra – You see yourself as a storyteller, weaving elements from your upbringing, spirituality, and culture and letting them pass through your body into vessels like performance, dance, installations, and scores. I am curious to know how did you arrive to this interdisciplinarity and what are some of the ways in which you nurture your practice.
Lee Ingram – I arrived at this interdisciplinary practice after a solitary period in my early to mid-20s. I spent a lot of time stuck in my head and in my room, exploring random ideas, interests, and portals, but I was too shy and unwell to share and unsure of where to even begin. When I first emerged into public work and performance, I thought,“ok…now that I am here, what the hell am I doing?” Without much reference, education, or arts training, I started pulling from different inspirations: ghostly sources of wisdom, personal experiences, old writings, and dreams. I have been blessed to collaborate with and learn from established interdisciplinary artists, Kemi Craig and Lindsay Delaronde. They are a huge part of my journey.
One way I nurture my practice is by spending time in nature. Whether in a forest, by the ocean, or now in Montreal, in parks or walking by the canal, I enjoy engaging in public spaces alone, observing people and nature, patterns, cycles, gestures, and sounds. Sometimes I find a spot to explore movement and work through ideas. This especially helps me when I start to get isolated, and I return to my solitude with new ways of thinking and feeling.
FY – In your storytelling, have you encountered elements that resist weaving, and how do you work and or honour those?
LI – I’m still at the beginning of my artist journey and my focus has been on gathering fragmented pieces to make sense of where and who I come from, what stories or ghosts reside within me, and what I am to do with this one precious life. But the weaving of these elements don’t always feel gentle—sometimes I get stuck in the pattern, in the weave. If there is resistance, it comes from wanting to stop “trying to figure it out”. The legacies (and curses) of slavery, displacement, poverty, Christian indoctrination, cultural erasure, and white supremacist violence weigh heavily on my mind and body. It can get quite overwhelming and isolating to work through these tensions.
Then there are times when I am just in the present, with no weaving, no need or desire to narrate a story, and I feel content in the nothingness. I think my improvisational dance practice resists weaving as an attempt to disconnect or at least to take some space from meaning, and instead surrender to the moment as it unfolds.
FY – In your artist statement you share that your experimental and interdisciplinary performance piece frozen cradle “intertwines poetry, dance, percussion, and layered voice recordings to honour to the strong (and sometimes stubborn) matriarchal figures in my Jamaican linage.” How was it to grow with these matriarchal figures and how do they influence the work you do now?
LI – Most of the women in my mother’s family—her mother, grandmothers, aunts, and cousins—are tough and sturdy; they are warriors. There aren’t many “soft” women in my family, and I think there’s a strong current, or perhaps a curse, of (justified) anger and bitterness that exists. I grew up internalizing this and continue to navigate this history in my social and solitary life.
When I engage in time-intensive work, I think of the matriarchs. I’ve done many labor-intensive jobs over the years, but now that I primarily focus on the labor of an artist, I am reminded that they didn’t get free time to be creative. I don’t take “being an artist” for granted.
All of the mothers, including my living mother, have a ghostly presence in my life and creative work. ‘frozen cradle’ and this current installation are attempts to communicate with them, to inquire about the traumas, rhythms, gestures, traditions, and attitudes they passed down. The healing aspect of my work is not just for myself. I wish to heal backwards as well. I am grateful, despite this inherited hardness, to be related to these “strong women from the hills” (line taken from ‘frozen cradle’).
FY – Where do you see your work residing other than your body? Is it important to find a suitable place for your storytelling or is your storytelling unfolding where it needs to be?
LI – As a dancer, my work emerges from the body and the environments I move through and with. But I also see my work residing in the public body through processes of collaboration, communication, and collective healing. I want to move beyond my own world and focus on community-based work, shared storytelling, and movement facilitation. While I witness perpetuating colonial violence, degradation of human life and the planet, etc, it feels necessary for my creative work to reside within the social and political body.
I like the idea that my storytelling is unfolding where it needs to be. My artistic practice and creative work have been a pathway to generating the spiritual strength and compassion needed to get through most days, so there is no ideal place for my storytelling to exist. It can occur anywhere, at any moment, with or without spectators, audiences, or witnesses. As long as I can collaborate or negotiate with any given space, it is suitable for me.
FY – In your artist statement, too, you share “As a person of the Diaspora with very little record or access to familial memory, I rely on a felt-sense and intuitive wisdom housed in my body. It is through movement, dance, and the language of percussion that I piece together these fragments. while we find place endeavours to carve out space for weaving the threads of identity, family, culture, and personal mythology–themes intricately woven into the fabric of frozen cradle.” How do you access that intuitive wisdom and how does it materialize into your work?
LI – For me, intuitive wisdom is about allowing the work to unfold naturally and letting it come together slowly without trying to control the process too much. When I relish in the unknown, I become connected to both randomness and meaning, experimentation and intention.
I never know what a project will end up being, and rarely do I have a grand vision. I just begin, usually fragmented and confused, until I reach a point where the work feels finished (or I run out of time). Yet it always feels as if it’s only finished for now, as everything seems like a continuation of something else. I enjoy this process; it makes me feel like anything I do is nurturing my artistic practice, and that I am always working on or through something.
My intuition doesn’t feel completely unfiltered or without critique though. I can be skeptical of my own instincts and beliefs. It is only when ideas start to form into something substantive or when a creative process exhausts itself that I recognize the intuition involved in the work. I have gathered a lot of wisdom from just observing, listening, asking questions, and honestly, lying on my bedroom floor doing nothing.
Listen to the score, ‘frozen cradle’: https://soundcloud.com/lee-457306924/frozen-cradle
