Figure 8 comes out of Steffani Jemison’s collaboration with athlete Alexis Page, creating a shared lexicon of movement, which they explore as a Black feminist research method, art-making strategy, and as a way of bringing virtuosity to the everyday. The title describes the looping movement of the camera, which encircles Page’s body as she muses aloud on topics such as continuity and fluency of gesture. The work is built around one single long take of Page performing, moving in response to and in tandem with the camera, translating her words through her body. Filmed in a public park, we catch glimpses of the sky, treeline, and surrounding buildings, as the body becomes the horizon through which we understand freedom.
Steffani Jemison is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers issues that arise when conceptual practices are inflected by black history and vernacular culture. She uses rigorous formal methods to explore her interests in the politics of serial form, the limits of narrative description, and the tension between improvisation, repetition, and fugitivity.