Light Work’s Urban Video Project presents Makahiya, an exhibition projected on the facade of the Everson, featuring new work by multimedia artist Crystal Z Campbell.

Makahiya, a Tagalog word that translates to “shame” or “shyness”, is the latest short experimental film from Crystal Z Campbell. Rooted in botanical research on a plant that displays the unusual trait of thigmonasty, or touch-induced movement, Campbell’s film is structured like intertwined vines. Digital video filmed on a recent trip to their mother’s ancestral homeland in the Philippines mingles with archival footage, hand drawn animation, and manipulated photographs. Campbell’s work explores this seemingly sentient plant’s paradoxical identity, from  rampant weed to indigenous medicinal plant. Makahiya reflects on photosynthesis, memory, and the violent colonial impetus of regimented forgetting.

Makahiya is an excerpt from Campbell’s longer, forthcoming film project, Post Masters. This body of work is drawn from Campbell’s familial history––a Black military father formerly stationed in the Philippines and Filipinx mother hailing from the archipelago, who both retired from the US Post Office. Campbell explores both explicit and implicit traces of labor, landscape, love, and bodies as intimate agents, modes, and witnesses of empire ripe for decolonizing through the unraveling of sound, image, and cinematic time.

All programs are free and open to the public

Screening:

February 22 – May 25, 2024

Thursday – Saturday, dusk – 11pm

Everson Museum Plaza

401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, NY

Lecture:

Thursday March 21, 6p.m. – Artist Talk at Hosmer Auditorium at the Everson Museum of Art