Sondra Perry, Resident Artist Lecture 2019

Sondra Perry gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her interdisciplinary practice which spans ceramics, animations, performance, installation, sound and video. At the Core of Perry’s work is this interest to try and understand what it means to be a vessel, and how her work can be used to create a psychic space through movement, chaos, and a reflection on her own autobiography. Perry is interested in working with video’s materiality to create a solid firmness of moving images which has also led to her interest in screens and projections. Perry also talks about her interest in video projection as a way to bring large groups of black people together and how these groups can become obscured. This process has allowed Perry to reflect on the importance of care, myth, and lies. Perry says that the longer we build relationships with people we work with, the more they can surprise us. This observation has led Perry to deepen her interest in what people are doing inside of images which is separate from portraiture. This has led her to the acknowledgment that their identity is theirs. Perry also talks about her projects leading her to dismantle binary ideas around good vs. evil and truth vs. lies, because this can lead to communities of colour creating commonalities with white people so healthy conversations can begin. Perry ends the lecture by talking about two projects. The first one is a work she made entitled Resident Evil where she became interested in the body and architecture, leading her to reflect on images. The second project Perry talks about is her role critiquing the flow of money in the institution of the MoCA in Cleveland. Perry uses the MoCA in Cleveland to talk about how Museums can be seen as a body that is infested with Bacteria, and how structure of a modern business can be directly related to how plantations are run. She uses the former land of MoCA Cleveland which was red-lined and exists through the suppression of Black communities.