SEQAA Video and Performance Works

Damali Abrams'

Reiki For Frustration About Police Killing (Noir Effect)

Rejin Leys'

Pandemic Dream Book

Elizabeth Velazquez's Performance & Installation

Today

Today is a work that creates space for respite and centers the significance of here and now. Before the pandemic, I refused to accept a belief in the present and held onto the constant movement of past and future. Forced to confront my rebellion against existence, I found solace in writing "Today is..." and repeating works containing the word "Today." The new installation, Today, encourages reflections on the present moment and manifests a reconciliation with it.

My sense of time vanished at the onset of the shelter-in-place lockdown. Life shifted from daily human-to-human contact into computer-based virtual routines. It was during difficult moments of isolation that I clung to the present. I needed to believe that "today" existed.

Thinking about the grandeur of the universe grounded me. Important to believing in the here and now were my coordinates on the planet. I focused on my body in relation to location, latitude and longitude, the cardinal directions, and the ancestral, which are all essential elements of the installation Today.

Margaret Rose Vendryes' Video & Installation

Divorce

In a salute to my senior sister artist, Howardena Pindell, Divorce is a multimedia, wall-mounted, assemblage being exhibited for the first time at York College during a time that will go down in global history. Howardena’s 1980 video, Free, White, and 21, inspired my decision to wear cat’s eye sunglasses and a mock turtleneck, but, unlike her political intentions, mine are purely personal as I hide my eyes that often speak louder than my voice.

As I cope with the COVID pandemic isolation, a decades-old project titled UNMADE, which has been developing in my studio, emerged with a vengeance. Divorce is a recent addition to UNMADE where, after shredding all the letters (dated as far back as 1972) written to me by my two past spouses, I found those shredded letters take on new life and contained them inside shadowboxes that then prompted me to address anew what was written on them in concrete script written across my torso and flowing from my lips.