Video Playlist: Rashayla Marie Brown
Museum of Contemporary PhotographyAbout The Event
Rashayla Marie Brown presents a night of photographs, video and performance featuring a new installment of her ongoing series The Unholy Trinity of Me, Myself, and I. Inspired by the concurrently running exhibitions, Dandy Lion: (Re)Articulating Black Masculine Identity and Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, this installment connects fetishes of respectability and class within Black visual culture to the personal. As a chameleon that willfully poses with both masculine and feminine attributes, she exalts her own being as the ultimate source of authority while also blending into the cultural landscape and identities of others. Brown’s performance takes the form of an academic lecture, weaving together the autobiographical with the historical through a multimedia projection, elements of drag and the occasional phone call to Atlanta. Similar to Motley, RMB has an obsession with her mother and ladies of the night.
The favorite topics of all self-respecting feminists and gold diggers (of 1933), including "subjectivity" and divas who act like men, are prominently featured. People who wonder why mulattoes have it so easy are encouraged to attend.
Performed twice in 2014, each installation of The Unholy Trinity of Me, Myself, and I contains common elements but is never re-performed the same. The performance will be followed by a 30-minute talk-back session, and it is the only time RMB will answer questions about the work in this installment.
Brown holds a BA in Sociology and African-American Studies from Yale University, advised by Paul Gilroy, and a BFA from SAIC, advised by Barbara DeGenevieve. She is also a current MA Candidate in Modern and Contemporary Art History at SAIC, studying artists who study art history and omnipresence in the canon.
Photo credit: You Can't See Me Fool, Courtesy of the artist
