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why some people be mad at me sometimes
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine.
Lucille Clifton
Inspired by renowned poet Lucille Clifton, “ask me to remember” Come to NOPA for an artist lecture and wet plate collodion demonstration by multidisciplinary research artist and archivist Felicita Felli Maynard.
Artist Statement:
As an artist, researcher, and archivist, I have invested in creating an inclusive archive for individuals within the African Diasporic community, particularly those with queer and trans identities. I look to Black feminist scholar Tina Campt, who, in Listening toImages, asks:
“Through what modalities of perception, encounter, and engagement do we constitute [the dispossessed]?” I engage with this question by investigating how Black queer and trans histories are remembered and imagined through archival practices and artistic intervention. My work challenges the notion that archives are static or impartial, treating them as fluid sites of resistance, refusal, and creation.
Collaging fiction, historical research, and embodied memory, I weave together photography, sound, and installation to explore how Blackness, queerness, and diaspora are recorded—or erased—within dominant historical narratives. My practice is a visualization of Mojuba, a term coined by Black feminist scholar M. Jacqui Alexander, describing an expansive, non-linear memory that refuses to be bound by geography, time, or the physicality of the body. Working within this framework, I interrogate how personal and collective histories are distorted and reclaimed through material culture and storytelling.
Demo Information:
Tintypes using wet plate collodion were a popular photography method in the 1850’s. There is an intimacy between the photographer and the subject when shooting wet plate collodion. Exposing and processing the plate must be done before the plate dries. Collodion, the main chemical in the process, is homemade from raw materials like metal salts and gum cotton. The way each plate is coated with collodion reflects a one-of-a-kind signature. The collodion process is very temperamental and is subject to a personality of its own. Each plate is coated, sensitized with silver nitrate, exposed, processed, and varnished. Every plate is different, making each one of a kind.
Bio:
Felicita Felli Maynard (b. 1989) is an interdisciplinary research-based artist and archivist from Brooklyn, NYC, currently living in New Orleans. Maynard works across many forms of photography, sculpture, sound, and installation. Maynard received their MFAfrom Tulane University in Photography (2023) and their BFA in Photography from CUNY Brooklyn College (2017). While at Tulane, they were a Mellon Fellow in Community- Engaged Scholarship (2021-2023). Their work explores the techniques and outcomes of survival and prosperity of descendants from the past, present, and future of the African diaspora. They investigate memory, the complexities left in landscapes governed by colonialism and capitalistic structures, and the joys that come from a practice of manifesting through world-making.
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